Central banks often use certain concentration indices in their official reports to determine the degree of intensity of competition, of which the most common are the concentration ratio and the Herfindahl-Hirschman index. It is important to emphasize that when calculating the value of these...

The aim of this study is to undertake an up-to-date assessment of market power in Central and Eastern European banking markets and explore how the global financial crisis has affected market power and what has been the impact of foreign ownership. Three main results emerge. First, while there is...

Empirical research about structure, conduct and performance in banking markets has developed mostly independently from the microeconomic theory of banking. The present paper reviews the literature by focusing on the links between theoretical and empirical research. It considers basic conditions,...

The aim of this study is to undertake an up-to-date assessment of market power in Central and Eastern European banking markets and explore how the global financial crisis has affected market power and what has been the impact of foreign ownership. Three main results emerge. First, while there is...

Empirical research about structure, conduct and performance in banking markets has developed mostly independently from the microeconomic theory of banking. The present paper reviews the literature by focusing on the links between theoretical and empirical research. It considers basic conditions,...

This study examines the firm size distribution of US financial institutions. A truncated lognormal distribution describes the size distribution, measured using assets data, of a large population of small, community-based commercial banks. The size distribution of a smaller but increasingly...

This paper revisits the old discussion of the applicability of structure-conduct-performance models to the banking industry. In contrast to earlier (single) country studies, we aimed at providing an overview of how it would look like, if the model indeed would be applied over time and across a...

The aim of this study is to undertake an up-to-date assessment of market power in Central and Eastern European banking markets and explore how the global financial crisis has affected market power and what has been the impact of foreign ownership. Three main results emerge. First, while there is...

Estimating the impact of bank mergers requires a framework distinguishing endogenous changes in market structure and conduct from exogenous changes. Conventionally, the literature relies on differential analysis, considering market structure as exogenous by using concentration indexes such as...

Bank profitability in the USA was extremely high in the pre-crisis period, yet this did not prevent the current crisis. It has become clear that these profits were on shaky grounds and also that bank profits were not used to buttress banks' capital bases. This paper analyses the effects of...