The U.S. banking industry has been characterized by intense merger activity in the absence of economies of scale and scope. We claim that the loosening of geographic constraints on U.S. banks is responsible for this consolidation process, irrespective of value-maximizing motives. We demonstrate...

We put forward a simple spatial competition model to study banks’ strategic responses to the Spanish asymmetric geographic deregulation. We find that once geographic deregulation process finishes, inter-regional mergers between the savings banks are optimal. We claim that the public good...