This paper examines the relationship between competition policies and policies to preserve stability in the banking sector. Market structures and the relative importance of the three classical antitrust areas for banking are discussed, showing the predominance of merger review considerations for...

The paper analyzes how the removal of barriers to entry in banking affect loan competition, bank stability and economic welfare. We consider a model of spatial loan competition where a market that is served by less efficient banks is opened to entry by banks that are more efficient in screening...

A growing body of literature indicates that competition increases bank soundness. Applying an industrial organization based approach to large data sets for European and U.S. banks, we offer new empirical evidence that efficiency plays a key role in the transmission from competition to soundness....

Payment scale economies affect banking costs, competition in payment services, and pricing. Our scale measure relates operating cost to physical measures of European banking "output", finding large economies. This differs from relating total cost to the value of balance sheet assets (the...

We study the effect of interbank market integration on small firm finance in the build-up to the 2007-2008 financial crisis. We use a comprehensive data set that contains contract terms on individual loans to 6,047 firms across 14 European countries between 1998:01 and 2005:12. We account for...

This report analyses the main developments in housing finance in the euro area in the decade, covering the period from 1999 to 2007. It looks at mortgage indebtedness, various characteristics of loans for house purchase, the funding of such loans and the spreads between the interest rates on...

This paper investigated the changes in competitive behaviour of banks in sub-Saharan Africa, following the 2007/2008 global financial crisis. Using 481 bank-year observations from an unbalanced panel of 83 banks from six countries over the period 2008-2013. We employed the Panzar-Rosse model of...

This paper examines market concentration and its effect on competition in the Chinese commercial banking market. This study also investigates how changes in competition have affected the financial stability of Chinese commercial banks. To test the competitive conditions, we obtained the H...

We model the financial cooperative as an optimal institution sharing liquidity risks among agents with social preference and group identity. Stronger social concerns imply objectively better (worse) conditions for borrowers (depositors). Testing the model, we find that, indeed, deposit and loan...

How countercyclical macroprudential credit policies affect the loan spread? To answer this question, we propose a microeconomic model of bank competition that contemplates differences in the behavior of public and private banks and the peculiarities of the market for corporate loans vis-a-vis...