A number of public policy issues turn on whether or not there are scale economies in commercial banking. This paper examines why empirical tests in this area have yielded differing results. Sorting out the different methodological approaches enables us to develop general conclusions on the size...

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This paper demonstrates the importance of using a flexible cost function specification when analyzing economies of scale and estimating the cost effect of banking mergers. The inflexibility of the translog cost function is illustrated and results are compared to more flexible spline and Fourier...