The Lerner index is widely used to assess firms' market power. However, estimation and interpretation present several challenges, especially for banks, which tend to produce multiple outputs and operate with considerable inefficiency. We estimate Lerner indices for U.S. banks for 2001-18 using...

This paper analyzes capital market reactions to international bank M&A. We investigate the combined stock return patterns of targets, bidders, and their peers upon takeover announcement, and closing or withdrawal. We distinguish five common M&A hypotheses and relate characteristic and mutually...

This paper tests for the existence of market power in banking, using data on demand deposit rates of households and corresponding market rates in five euro area countries. An implicit measure for market power is based on a partial adjustment model that also allows for an asymmetric response of...

Persistent shifts in equilibria are likely to arise in oligopolistic markets and may be detrimental to the measurement of conduct, related markups and intensity of competition. We develop a cointegrated VAR (vector autoregression) based approach to detect long-run changes in conduct when data...

The aggregate Lerner index is a popular composite measure of multi-product banks' market power, based on the assumption that banks' single aggregate output factor is total assets. This study identifies three limitations of the aggregate Lerner index that potentially distort its interpretation as...

Intertemporal shifts in conduct, such as a transition from competitive to anticompetitive behavior, induce shifts in the firms' equilibrium price configurations. Such shifts generate non-stationary price dynamics in addition to those which originate from exogenous fundamentals. We exploit this...

This is the first analysis of the incidence of a bank tax that is imposed on banks' balance sheets. Within the framework of an oligopolistic version of the Monti-Klein model, the pass-through of a bank tax levied on loans is stronger when elasticity of credit demand is low. To test this...

This paper analyzes the evolution of the Lerner index for Costa Rican banks between 2008 and 2019. We document a significant drop in market power during this period, which we relate to less concentration in loans and deposits. The market became less consolidated as a fringe of 29 small banks...

Does market power of banks affect firm performance? To answer this question we examine 25,236 syndicated loan facilities granted between 2000 and 2010 by 296 banks to 9,029 US non-financial firms. Accounting for both observed and unobserved bank and firm heterogeneity, we find that firms that...

This paper examines the implications of banking competition for the interest rate channel in the Eurozone over the period 2003-2010. We use an Error Correction Model (ECM) approach to measure the long-run and short-run relationships between money market rates, bank interest rates, and our...