We utilize time series tests with structural breaks to test for an adverse impact on economic growth rates in North Africa associated with the recent US financial crisis and global recession. One or two breaks are identified for each country, except for Morocco where no break is found, while breaks coincide with the 2008 financial crisis in only two of the six countries (Libya and Mauritania). These findings suggest that, in general, shocks from the recent financial crisis have only temporary effects on economic growth in these countries. Impulse response functions with breaks confirm these results. We conclude by suggesting explanations for these findings.

A nonparametric frontier approach is used to calculate the overall, technical, pure technical, allocative, and scale efficiencies for a sample of 322 independent banks. The sample was drawn from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation tapes on the Reports of Conditions and Reports of Income (Call Reports) for the year 1986. The results indicate a low level of overall efficiency. The main source of inefficiency is technical in nature, rather than allocative. Separate efficiency frontiers are constructed to test the effect of branching. However, the distributions of efficiency measures for branching and nonbranching banks are not found to be different. Coauthors are Richard Grabowski, Carl Pasurka, and Nanda Rangan.