Taking into consideration methodological features of the aforementioned bodies of literature it has
been found, to the best of our knowledge, that the discriminant analysis has not yet been applied in
descriptions of bank profitability. Thus, the paper attempts to answer on two main research questions:
What is the scope of discriminant analysis when applied to the chosen research problem? Are results
obtained through discriminant analysis (i.e. explicators of differences in bank profitability levels) in
line to the ones obtained through the panel data analysis? Altogether, a research hypothesis H1 is set
up:
H1: Discriminant analysis is a suitable statistical method for distinguishing and classifying banks in
different profitability levels, according to some generally accepted predictors (determinants) of bank
profitability.