local credit markets. We provide evidence that marginal increases in interbank competition are detrimental to relationship … technologies are al-ready widely in use in the market by a large group of small mutual banks, an increase in competition may drive … banks to further cultivate their extensive ties with customers. -- interbank competition ; market organizational structure …

This paper analyses the relation between competition and concentration in the banking sector. The empirical answer is … given by testing a monopolistic competition model of bank branching behaviour on individual bank data at county level … (départements and provinces) in France and Italy. We propose a measure of the degree of competiveness in each local market that is …