The number of firm bankruptcies is surprisingly low in economies with poor institutions. We study a model of bank-firm relationship and show that the bank's decision to liquidate bad firms has two opposing effects. First, the bank gets a payoff if a firm is liquidated. Second, it loses the rent...

This paper analyses the relation between competition and concentration in the banking sector. The empirical answer is given by testing a monopolistic competition model of bank branching behaviour on individual bank data at county level (départements and provinces) in France and Italy. We...

This paper analyses the relation between competition and concentration in a monopolistic competition model where banks compete in branching and interest rates and where M&As as well as the overall market structure are endogenously determined. The model is tested on data on Bank Groups, collected...

We propose a new test to evaluate the impact of horizontal mergers on competition in the banking industry. The test is designed to be applied ex-ante to potential mergers while being parsimonious in terms of data, as it only uses information on branches in local markets. The test is a...

Endogenous sunk-cost investments are optional fixed investment or capita, that a firm can choose to impact either upon its price-cost margin or its market share for capturing larger market spoils. Oft-cited examples are investments in vertical product (quality) differentiation, advertising...

This paper analyses the relation between competition and concentration in a monopolistic competition model where banks compete in branching and interest rates and market structure is endogenous. The model is applied on individual bank data in Italy and France using a maximum likelihood approach...

A growing literature addresses the costs and benefits associated with relationship banking, particularly for smaller firms, but with much of this work focused on normal trading conditions. Covid-19 provides an ideal testbed to explore the resilience of relationship banking. We examine whether...

Using unique micro-data that contain the internal information on all corporate customers of a large Nordic bank, I show that combining loan and non-loan products (cross-selling) has two benefits. First, it increases credit supply, especially in recessions. Second, it increases the likelihood of...

The Global Financial Crisis (GFC: 2008–2009) and the Euro Sovereign Crisis (ESC: 2010–2012) seem a process of creative destruction for the European Union (EU). The huge damage provoked by the GFC and ESC was, in fact, followed by important institutional building steps as the Banking Union...

We show that competing firms relax overall competition by lowering future barriers to entry. We illustrate our findings in a two-period model with adverse selection where banks strategically commit to disclose borrower information. By doing this, they invite rivals to enter their market....