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Discussion Paper
The price-concentration relationship in banking
Working Paper
The competitive implications of multimarket bank branching
Regulators and research economists typically view retail banking markets as locally limited, spanning an area that can often be approximated by a metropolitan area or a rural county. Banks are assumed to set retail prices based on the conditions of supply and demand prevailing within these local market areas. However, recent studies have found evidence that large, multimarket banking organizations tend to offer uniform interest rates for retail deposit accounts of a particular type throughout the area that they serve, at least within a given state. This uniform pricing phenomenon raises ...
Working Paper
Recent trends in the number and size of bank branches: an examination of likely determinants
In this paper, we examine the role of market characteristics in explaining the much discussed phenomenon of growth in the number of banking institution branches over time, and the much less discussed phenomenon of decline in the size of the average branch. We note first that substitution of bank branches in the US for thrift branches accounts for much of the sharp rise observed for bank branches over time. Using a panel data set that consists of over 2,000 markets observed from 1988 to 2004, we report a number of findings regarding the market characteristics that are associated with the ...
Working Paper
ATM surcharge bans and bank market structure: the case of Iowa and its neighbors
It is frequently claimed that high ATM surcharges actually attract customers to the banks that impose them, particularly if they operate large ATM networks. By exploiting as "natural experiments" two events associated with the lifting of surcharge bans in Iowa and in the states that neighbor Iowa, this paper seeks to test for the implications of this phenomenon as it applies to the market shares of banking institutions and to several aspects of market structure. Consistent with these implications, results of "difference-in-difference" analyses suggest that the shares of larger market ...