We exploit the deregulation of interstate bank branching laws to test whether banking competition affects innovation. We find robust evidence that banking competition reduces state-level innovation by public corporations headquartered within deregulating states. Innovation increases among...

The United States still has a heavily paper-based retail payment system when compared with many other developed economies, but the shift to electronic payments has been bigger and more decisive than commonly perceived. For the first time ever, check use declined in the mid-1990s, and among...

How does competition affect innovation in the banking industry? We use the 1994 Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act as a major exogenous shock on U.S. banking industry competition and study its impact on innovation. Addressing this issue is challenging however because...