The European banking industry is currently facing the effects arising from the increasing integration of national financial markets. In adapting to this new scenario, the Italian banking system has undergone a considerable transformation. The degree of competition in the Italian banking system...

The European banking industry is currently facing the effects arising from the increasing integration of national financial markets. In adapting to this new scenario, the Italian banking system has undergone a considerable transformation. The degree of competition in the Italian banking system...

Conventional models of the industrial organisation theory usually state that in concentrated industries firms have significant market power, and that competition can be easily reduced if the leading firms collude. However, recent theoretical analyses show that strong concentration does not...

This paper evaluates the possible effects of advertising on conditions of entry in a market with one incumbent and one potential entrant. Through a game-theoretic framework, it is shown that the use of pre-entry advertising expenditures (which are supposed to exhibit diminishing returns) may...

In this paper we develop an empirical two-stage model of competition for the banking industry that incorporates the choice of capacity in the form of new branches. It is estimated using data on Italian banks for the years 1995-2009. The results show that the conduct of banks is significantly...

The existing empirical evidence suggests that there is a “winner’s curse” for banks entering new markets. Actually, it has been assessed that de novo banks generally experience higher bad loans rates than mature banks for about ten years. We investigate whether this persistence has...