A look at both the reported decline in the share of nonfinancial-sector credit intermediated by banks and the consolidation of the industry into fewer, but larger, institutions, revealing that banks today account for nearly the same share of outstanding household and nonfinancial business-sector...

This paper introduces a simple method to test between two general approaches to defining bank and thrift product markets. I estimate two models that endogenize market structure using data on banks and thrifts from 1,884 rural markets for the year 2000. The first model assumes that banks and...

Theoretical models of lending and industrial organization theory predict that firm access to credit depends critically on bank market structure. However, empirical studies offer mixed results. Some studies find that higher concentration is associated with higher credit availability consistent...