The global financial crisis has highlighted the importance of early identification of weak banks: when problems are … identified late, solutions are much more costly. Until recently, Europe has seen only a small number of outright bank failures …, which made the estimation of early warning models for bank supervision very difficult. This paper presents a unique database …

banks can extract market power rents. We show that more bank competition results in lower economy-wide risk, lower bank … capital ratios, more efficient production plans and Pareto-ranked real allocations. Perfect competition supports a second best … allocation and optimal levels of bank risk and capitalization. These results are at variance with those obtained by a large …

-to-assets ratio is ambiguous. Similarly, as competition increases, the probability of bank failure can either increase or decrease. We …We study a banking model in which banks invest in a riskless asset and compete in both deposit and risky loan markets …. The model predicts that as competition increases, both loans and assets increase; however, the effect on the loans …

declines in lending standards by incumbent banks. Finally, lending standards declined more in areas with higher mortgage …

As in other sectors, competition in finance matters for allocative, productive and dynamic efficiency. Theory suggests …, however, that unfettered competition is not first best given the special features of finance. I review these analytics and … describe how to assess the degree of competition in markets for financial services. Existing research shows that the degree of …

, or is relatively inefficient, then imperfect competition and intermediate levels of bank risks are optimal. These results … to scale of the intermediation technology used by banks to screen and/or monitor borrowers. If the intermediation … technology exhibits increasing returns to scale, or it is relatively efficient, then perfect competition is optimal and supports …

far-reaching banking sector reforms undertaken in Uganda to improve competition and efficiency. Using models that have … been previously used only in industrial countries, we find that the level of competition has increased significantly and … has been associated with a rise in efficiency. Moreover, on average, larger banks and foreign-owned banks have become more …

'Afrique Centrale (CEMAC) and the level of bank competition at the regional level. Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative … excess liquidity in the region. Other data also indicate that bank competition within the CEMAC as a region is limited …

We use data for more than 2,600 European banks to test whether increased competition causes banks to hold higher … capital ratios. Employing panel data techniques, and distinguishing between the competitive conduct of small and large banks …, we show that banks tend to hold higher capital ratios when operating in a more competitive environment. This result holds …

Traditional bank competition policy seeks to balance efficiency with incentives to take risk. The main tools are rules … argue that bank competition policy should be reoriented to deal with the too-big-to-fail (TBTF) problem. It should also … focus on the permissible scope of activities rather than on market structure of banks. And following a crisis, competition …