The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) has concluded that competition in the market for SME loans from banks is suboptimal, and has, in fact, decreased in the past few years. Only a limited number of banks is active in this market, there are high barriers to entry, and...

This paper documents a positive relation between bank competition and the penetration of bank accounts at the municipal level in Mexico. To account for potential biases in our regressions due to the endogeneity of market structure, we employ a two-stage estimation approach based on an...

Interest rate caps are widespread in consumer credit markets, yet there is limited evidence on its effects on market outcomes and welfare. Conceptually, the effects of interest rate caps are ambiguous and depend on a trade-off between consumer protection from banks' market power and reductions...

This paper studies bank competition with borrower adverse selection. In the model, expected non-performing loan costs are high when credit is granted in booms, when risk free rates are low, or when competition is strong. I prove that full competition is suboptimal due to this last effect; that...

Edgworth's taxation paradox states that an excise tax can decrease the market price of a good.  This paper presents a new version of the paradox in which a tax reduces price because it attracts entry of additional firms into the market.  The paper also presents two new applications: (i) an...

English Abstract: Financial liberalization accelerates global banks’ entry into new markets where host countries hope to spur investment and economic growth. However, banks sometimes retreat from their global ambitions and exit these new markets. This study demonstrates how difficulties of...

This paper investigates the relationship between operating cost efficiency and the loan quality of Russian banks. It tries to answer the question whether it is always beneficial for banks to be highly cost efficient (the “bad management” hypothesis) or whether this higher cost efficiency...

Empirical findings document a number of facts on small business finance and relationship lending, that lack hitherto a theoretical explanation. First, the impact of competition on relationship lending may be nonmonotonic and depends on the organizational structure of the banking market. Second,...

Our paper explores the influence of credit derivatives on bank credit supply theoretically and empirically. We build a two-stage model of financial intermediation, which treats the bank under consideration as one of a large number of monopolists in the local credit market. From the theoretical...

With the reform of the RMB exchange rate regime, China's banks expose to more exchange rate risks and use foreign exchange derivatives to manage these risks. This paper develops a theoretical model to examine the relationship between foreign exchange derivatives and the foreign currency lending...