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This paper investigates the technical, pure technical, and scale efficiency of 9 development financial institutions (DFIs) operating in Malaysia from 2006-2012 and factors affecting the efficiency of development financial institutions, using the two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA). Results revealed that the mean technical efficiency of DFIs in Malaysia is 78 percent. Two banks namely BPMB and SCC are the benchmark banks identified by DEA scores. Results show that the role of scale inefficiency in overall technical inefficiency is comparatively less than managerial inefficiency. Results also show that only BPMB, SCC experienced constant returns to scale for the period 2006-2012, fulfilling their primary objective of contributing towards the socio-economy development of the state. BSN, a major saving institution, experienced decreasing returns to scale in 2009 and 2012. SME bank, whose mission is to develop SMEs, too experienced decreasing returns to scale during 2009-2010. CGC and Agro bank also experienced decreasing returns to scale in 2008-2009 and 2010-2012. In second stage, results of the OLS regression analysis provides that Loans to total assets, natural logarithm of total assets, Loan-Loss provision to total loans, non-interest income to total assets, return on assets and total shareholders' equity to total assets are related to technical efficiency but loans to total assets, positively related to technical efficiency and significant and shows that banks with higher loan to asset ratios tend to have higher technical efficiency scores; non-interest income to total assets is negatively related to technical efficiency and significant revealing that development financial institutions which derive a higher proportion of income from non-interest sources tend to report lower efficiency scores. Return on assets are found significant in explaining the Malaysian development financial institutions efficiency from 2006-2012.

The purpose of this article is to assess the Russian banking system for the period 1991-2015. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia introduced economic reforms to move from a centrally planned economy to a market economy, and banking reforms were part of it. During early years of transition, Russia suffered from negative growth rate: 1998 and 2008 crises. The entire Russian economy, including the banking system, got affected. Therefore, it is essential to know how the Russian banking system performed in these 25 years. The study found that the Russian banking system performance was not satisfactory until 1998-1999; from 2000 onwards, the system showed some signs of resilience. The Russian banking system is largely concentrated and dominated by state-owned banks with 58.4 per cent of share of the total banking assets and 57 per cent share of the total banking capital in comparison to foreign-owned and privately owned banks. Banks are largely concentrated in the regions of Moscow and St. Petersburg in comparison to Ural, Siberia and Russian Far East. Macroeconomic indicators of the Russian banking sector, including banking sector assets, capital, loans, securities and household deposits as per cent to GDP, revealed a rising trend. This indicates the ability of the banking sector to create loans and attract depositors by maintaining their trust in the banking system. Return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE) and non-performing loans (NPL) are the main drivers of profitability, and the trend shows a low growth rate in ROA and equity and high growth rate in NPL, which are of major concern for banking system health.

Disintegration of the Soviet state was unanticipated in Central Asia and the new independent states were unprepared. The end of central planning in the late 1980s led to transitional recession and this got worse with the dissolution of the USSR. In this difficult situation, the five countries moved at different paces to stabilize their economies and establish market-based system. During transition era, Central Asian states introduced stabilization and structural reforms in the form of monetary policy, introduction of national currencies, price liberalization, privatization and fiscal reforms. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan lead by introducing various reforms while Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan lagged behind and were slow reformers. Tajikistan was one state that suffered due to internal civil war. These stabilization and structural reforms produced mixed results for Central Asian states. Present study will provide an overview of the journey of 25 years of the five Central Asian states since independence, their experience with the reforms and their performance in the region.

The end of the Cold War has not only brought about changes at the global level, but has also influenced regional and bilateral relations in a significant way. In Asia, India and Japan are the two important countries affected by such change. Consequently their relations underwent significant changes during the last decade. Whereas Japan made a major shift in its foreign policy from "commercial liberalism" to "reluctant realism", India through its "look east" policy and structural reforms has made new orientations in its policy.'