Managing bank performance under COVID-19: A novel inverse DEA efficiency approach.

The evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic is highly unpredictable; however, its impacts are limited to neither a single sector nor a single country. This study evaluates the performance and efficiency of 49 Islamic banks across 10 countries during 2019-2020 to assess how those banks can preserve their performance and remain resilient in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the conventional inverse data envelopment analysis (InvDEA) approach, we show that because of reductions in their outputs, 31 out of the 49 banks studied would need to reduce their inputs so that their efficiency can remain unchanged.