The introduction of the Euro in EMU is enhancing international competition between European banks, forcing banks to become more efficient. Which countries will be effected the most? The stochastic cost frontier approach is used to estimate the X-efficiency of the European banks, and a...

This paper analyses the impact of loan market competition on the interest rates applied by euro area banks to loans and deposits during the 1994-2004 period, using a novel measure of competition called the Boone indicator. We find evidence that stronger competition implies significantly lower...

This paper presents empirical evidence on the competitive structure in the banking industry in the EU as a whole as well as in individual EU countries. The study is based on a non-structural estimation technique to evaluate the elasticity of total interest revenues with respect to changes in...

The new Basel Capital Accord will result in more risk sensitive regulatory capital for banks. Likewise, financial conglomerates' internal models will become more important in group-wide supervision. Such models are relatively well developed for market and credit risk but for others, such as...

Bresnahan and Lau developed a model of profit maximising oligopoly banks in order to determine the degree of market power of the average bank. The equilibrium price equation includes a mark up, which is not used at all under perfect competition, partly used under oligopoly or monopolistic...

This paper provides a survey on recent and current developments in the European banking industry. Traditional banking activities have diminished in relative terms, but banks remain the predominant players in the euro area financial system. Economic and monetary integration in the EU has strongly...

This paper examines competitive conditions and market structure in the banking industry, and investigates their interrelationship. Competition is measured using the non-structural Panzar-Rosse model, which assesses the elasticities of interest revenues with respect to changes in banks' input...

The current debate on the possible procyclicality of the new Basel Accord pays little attention to the procyclicality created by unsound loan loss provisioning. This paper investigates how bank provisioning behaviour is related to the business cycle, using 8,000 bank-year observations from 29...

This paper examines competitive conditions and market structure in the banking industry, and inves- tigates their interrelationship. Competition is measured using the non-structural Panzar-Rosse model, which assesses the elasticities of interest revenues with respect to changes in banks' input...