In France, mutual banks played a key role during the recent period of consolidation of the banking industry because they acquired many privately listed banks. Our analysis of the acquisition of the private bank Crédit Lyonnais by the mutual bank Crédit Agricole illustrates three findings....

How does competition affect innovation in the banking industry? We use the 1994 Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act as a major exogenous shock on U.S. banking industry competition and study its impact on innovation. Addressing this issue is challenging however because...

We investigate the relationship between borrower quality and the structure of the pool of banks. First, we develop a theoretical model where the size of the banking pool is a credible signal of firm quality. We argue that better borrowers seek to disclose their quality in a credible way through...