Thousands of U.S. households filed for bankruptcy just before the bankruptcy law changed in 2005. That rush-to-file was more pronounced, we find, in states with more generous bankruptcy exemptions and lower credit scores. We take that finding as evidence that the new law effectively reduces...

This paper estimates a structural demand model for commercial bank deposit services in order to measure the effects on consumers given dramatic changes in bank services throughout US branching deregulation in the 1990s. Following the discrete choice literature, consumer decisions are based on...

Using a sample for 1972-2002 with over 8,000 bank entries into local markets, we find a market share advantage for earlier entrants. In particular, the earlier a bank enters, the larger is its market share relative to other banks, controlling for firm, market and time effects, with a market...

The paper examines the effects of the Riegle-Neal branching deregulation in the 1990s on banking market structure, service, and performance. While concentration at the regional level has increased, deregulation has left almost intact the structure of metropolitan markets, which have between two...

Local banking markets depict enormous variation in population size. Yet this paper finds that the nature of bank competition across markets is strikingly similar. First, markets remain similarly concentrated regardless of size. Second, the number of dominant banks is roughly constant across...

Using a sample for 1972-2002 with over 10,000 bank entries into local markets, we find a market share advantage for early entrants. In particular, the earlier a bank enters, the larger is its market share relative to other banks, controlling for firm, market, and time effects, with a market...

We offer and test two competing hypotheses for the consolidation trend in banking using U.S. banking industry data over the period 1982-2000. Under the "efficiency hypothesis", technological progress improved the performance of large, multimarket firms relative to small, single-market firms,...