We study the effects of bank mergers and acquisitions in the U.K. from 1885 to 1925. The lack of a regulatory authority and the confidential nature of merger negotiations allows us to precisely measure the wealth effects of M&As in a laissez-faire environment. We find positive wealth effects for...

We investigate the impact of increasing bank concentration on bank loan contracts in a lightly regulated environment. This environment allows us to abstract from possible confounding effects of regulation to focus on the “pure” effects of competition on bank lending. We study over 30,000...