Data now being collected under the Community Reinvestment Act can be used to examine several issues related to analyses of the competitive effects of proposed bank mergers and bank holding company acquisitions. This article looks at two of those issues: whether locally based commercial banks and...

Our anti-trust laws dictate that bank mergers be rejected if they will substantially lessen competition in their markets. Yet bigger bank mergers are approved every year. What's going on? One word: divestiture.

The authors analyze the effect of bank mergers on deposit interest rates, using data on banks responding to the Federal Reserve's Monthly Survey of Selected Deposits over an 11-year period. Their results suggest that banks exercise market power in pricing money market deposits and CD's in their...

The purpose of this study is to determine whether, from a public policy standpoint, divestitures constitute an effective antitrust remedy in bank merger cases. A number of findings emerge from the study: Divested branches have a remarkable survival record; structural changes effected by...