This paper suggests a motive for bank mergers that goes beyond alleged and typically unverifiable scale economies … distress mergers. The data comprise 3640 banks and 1484 mergers. Our results suggest that bank mergers as a means of preemtive …

of such cooperative practices. We study two adjacent markets comprising one savings or cooperative bank that focuses on … one market and one private commercial bank serving both. We acknowledge that savings and cooperative banks have atypical … demarcation that shields the private commercial bank from aggressive competition …