Paraná’s credit unions: An analysis of their efficiency and productivity change

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency and productivity change of Paraná’s Credit Union. The analysis considered 45 units (each credit union researched), each of one with 10 variables in each period (8 inputs and 2 outputs). This evaluation has taken into account quarterly credit union’s data, from January 2009 to July 2015 (27 periods). The methodology included Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and Malmquist Index (MI) techniques. The results showed that DMUs 453, 498 and 517 were considered 100% efficient in all periods, making them ideal benchmarks. There was no case that a DMU was not considered 100% efficient in at least one observation. The MI showed that the difference between the biggest and the smallest average was significant (varying between 19.837 for DMU 251 and 0.926 for DMU 450). The average between all MI was 4,735 with a standard deviation of 3,547, evidencing the different measures of efficiency between each DMU when compared to the others.