In this paper we study the impact of cooperative banks on local economic development. Working on Italian municipality data in the period 2001-2011, we find that this type of banks plays a distinct role in enhanced local economic performance – particularly income, employment and firms' birth...

Does ‘inner' competition – rivalry among network members – worsen performance in a network of cooperative banks? Inner competition might, in fact, endanger network-dependent scale economies. We test our hypothesis on Banche di Credito Cooperativo (BCCs), Italy's network of mutual...

In this paper we study the intense wave of mergers among Italian mutual cooperative banks (Banche di Credito Cooperativo, BCCs) and try to assess whether those mergers were efficiency-enhancing. For the purpose, we employ a two-step procedure: we first estimate bank-level cost efficiency scores...

In this study we explore market power in 13 EU banking sectors for the years 2007 to 2019 by estimating a structural model with demand and supply equations, where the mark-up of price over marginal cost is parameterized as a measure of banks’ conduct that depends on selected factors. Our...

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...