Deregulation, liberalization and consolidation of the Mexican banking system: Effects on competition

This paper analyzes the evolution of competition in the Mexican banking system in the period 1993-2005, a period of deregulation, liberalization and consolidation of the sector. For this purpose we use two indicators of competition from the theory of industrial organization (the Lerner index and the Panzar and Rosse’s H-statistic). The empirical evidence does not permit us to reject the existence of monopolistic competition. The Lerner index shows a decrease in competitive rivalry in the deposit market and an increase in the loan market, a cross subsidization strategy being observed. The results obtained call into question the effectiveness of the measures implemented hitherto, aimed at increasing the competition of the Mexican banking system.     

Competition in banking and the lending channel: Evidence from bank-level data in Asia and Latin America

This paper examines how banking competition affects the transmission of monetary policy through the bank lending channel. We apply a two-step estimation procedure using bank-level panel data for commercial banks in 10 Asian and 10 Latin American countries during the period from 1996 to 2006. In the first step we measure the degree of banking competition by applying the methodology proposed by Panzar and Rosse (1987). In the second step we estimate a loan growth equation where the explanatory variables include the Panzar–Rosse measure of banking competition. The estimation results provide consistent evidence that increased competition in the banking sector weakens the transmission of monetary policy through the bank lending channel. This is especially true for banks in Latin American countries and banks of small size, low liquidity, and low capitalization. We also discuss the policy implications of the main findings of this paper.     

Does the expansion of regional cross-border banks affect competition in Africa? Indirect evidence

This article investigates how bank competition has evolved in Africa following the recent penetration and expansion of regional cross-border banks over the past decade. We examine changes in competition in the banking industry of seven African countries highly affected by this recent phenomenon. The evolution of competition is evaluated through three different non-structural measures of competition (Lerner index, Panzar–Rosse model, and Boone indicator). With the exception of results from the Lerner index, our findings show an intensification of competition since the mid-2000s. This period corresponds to the rapid expansion of regional cross-border banks in the zone, indicating that this expansion has promoted competition in banking sectors in Africa.     

Does cross-ownership affect competition?: Evidence from the Italian banking industry

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the effects of cross-ownership among Italian banks on competition in the national banking sector. This aim is pursued by measuring and comparing the degree of competition between banks involved in the web of cross-ownership and banks that are not involved. The bank's degree of competition is measured by applying the methodology developed by [Panzar, J.C., Rosse, J.N., 1987. Testing for monopoly equilibrium. Journal of Industrial Economics 35, 443–456.] The econometric results provide empirical evidence that, in the period 1996–2000, Italian banks involved in cross-ownership were less competitive than the other national credit firms, thus supporting the view that cross-ownership may represent an obstacle to industrial competition.     

Competition and Concentration in the New European Banking Landscape

This paper measures the degree of concentration and competition in the enlarged European Union (EU) banking environment over the period 1998–2002. In the empirical part we opt for a methodology as proposed by Panzar and Rosse based on a non‐structural estimation of market competition. Our results suggest that European banks were operating under conditions of monopolistic competition and that bank interest revenues in the 10 new EU member states was earned under conditions of higher competition than those that existed in the old EU banking countries. The opposite result was observed for total operating revenues. Smaller banks earn interest income in a less competitive environment than larger banks, while the opposite is observed for total revenues.     

Assessing competition in the banking industry: A multi-product approach

This paper investigates the competitive aspects of multi-product banking operations. Extending Panzar and Rosse’s (1987) model to the case of a multi-product banking firm, we show that higher economies of scope in multi-product banking are associated with lower Panzar–Rosse measures of competition in the banking sector. To test this empirical implication and determine the impact of multi-production on market power, we use a new dataset on the Brazilian banking industry. Consistent with our theoretical prediction, we find that banks that offer classic banking products (i.e., loans and credit cards) and other banking products (i.e., brokerage services, insurance and capitalization bonds) have substantially higher market power than banks that offer only classic products. These results suggest a positive bias in the traditional estimates of competition in which multi-output actions are not considered.     

Foreign participation and banking competition: Evidence from the Indonesian banking industry

Foreign participation in Indonesian banking has expanded from the establishment of foreign de novo banks into the acquisition of existing local banks. The increase in foreign participation has therefore not been associated with a growing number of banks. This study aims to examine the competitive behavior of foreign and local banks as a competitive banking industry is important in boosting economic efficiency and economic growth. This study also examines the role of modes of entry of foreign banks on competition, either through the establishment of foreign de novo banks or the acquisition of local banks. The recent methodological refinements of the Panzar–Rosse method developed by Bikker et al. (2011) are employed to estimate the level of competition among local and foreign banks. Generally, the foreign banks, particularly foreign de novo banks behaved more competitively than local banks, and their penetration is therefore important in creating a contestable market. This study found that in terms of assets, on average foreign de novo banks were smaller, more efficient, and had lower overhead costs, so they could offer lower loan rates and disburse more loans. The recent consolidation in the Indonesian banking industry may have an adverse impact on competition as it restricts the establishment of foreign de novo banks.     

Are Competitive Banking Systems More Stable?

Using the Panzar and Rosse H-statistic as a measure of competition in 45 countries, we find that more competitive banking systems are less prone to experience a systemic crisis and exhibit increased time to crisis. This result holds even when we control for banking system concentration, which is associated with higher probability of a crisis and shorter time to crisis. Our results indicate that competition and concentration capture different characteristics of banking systems, meaning that concentration is an inappropriate proxy for competition. The findings suggest that policies promoting competition among banks, if well executed, have the potential to improve systemic stability.     

Competition in banking: A disequilibrium approach

The Rosse–Panzar revenue test for competitive conditions in banking is based on observation of the impact on bank revenue of variation in factor input prices. We identify the implications for the H-statistic of misspecification bias in the revenue equation, arising when adjustment towards market equilibrium is partial and not instantaneous. In simulations, fixed effects estimation produces a measured H-statistic that is severely biased towards zero. Empirical results for the banking sectors of the Group of Seven (G7) countries corroborate our principal finding, that a dynamic formulation of the revenue equation is required for accurate identification of the H-statistic.     

Market structure and competitive conditions in the Arab GCC banking system

This paper investigates the market structure of Arab GCC banking industry during the years of 1993–2002 using the most frequently applied measures of concentration k-bank concentration ratio (CRk) and Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) and evaluates the monopoly power of banks over the ten years period using the ‘H-statistic’ by Panzar and Rosse. The results show that Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and UAE have moderately concentrated markets and are moving to less concentrated positions. The measures of concentration also show that Qatar, Bahrain and Oman are highly concentrated markets. The Panzar–Rosse H-statistics suggest that banks in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE operate under perfect competition; banks in Bahrain and Qatar operate under conditions of monopolistic competition; and we are unable to reject monopolistic competition for the banking market in Oman.     

Schumpeterian competition and efficiency among commercial banks

In this paper, we aim to fill the gap in the banking literature by quantifying the impact that the Schumpeterian competition mode – i.e. competition through the launch of new products (or new varieties of products) – has on the cost and profit efficiency of a sample of commercial banks based in the United Kingdom. We estimate both a cost and an alternative profit frontier on an unbalanced panel of UK commercial banks over the period 2001–2012. The intensity of competition through product innovation is proxied by the trademark intensity (i.e. the ratio between the number of trademarks registered in a given year by all the commercial banks – net of the trademarks registered by the bank under observation – and the employment in the sector) in the commercial banking sector. Our results show that the (lagged) trademark intensity in the commercial banking sector does affect negatively the mean cost and profit efficiency in the sector but there is evidence that as trademark intensity increases in the sector, commercial banks react by improving their cost and profit efficiency.     

Has competition in the Japanese banking sector improved?

This paper investigates whether competition in the Japanese banking sector has improved in the last quarter of the 20th century. By estimating the first order condition of profit maximization, together with the cost function and the inverse demand function, we found that competition had improved, especially in the 1970s and in the first half of the 1980s. The results fail to reject a Cournot oligopoly for city banks for most of the period, while they do reject it for regional banks for the overall period. This suggests that competition among city banks was stronger than that among regional banks.     

Empirical assessment of the competitive conduct of Nigerian banks in a post-consolidation era

This paper is an empirical assessment of the level of competition in the Nigerian banking industry following the consolidation exercise, using a bank-level panel data, for the period 2005–2014. Empirical evidence from the Panzar and Rosse (1987) H-statistic reveals that market power in the Nigerian banking industry is consistent with monopolistic competition, which implies that firms are independent in their decision-making and conduct. This study innovates by incorporating non-interest income accounts in the assessment of revenue, and findings suggest that bank competitiveness decreases as revenue tends toward an inclusion of non-interest income or fee-based services.     

Competition and innovation: Evidence from financial services

This paper presents new evidence on the relationship between competition and innovation by extending previous literature from manufacturing to financial services. We introduce a new measure of overall innovation by estimating and enveloping annual minimum cost frontiers to create a global frontier. The distance to the global frontier constitutes each bank’s technology gap, which decreases if the bank manages to innovate. Our innovation measure enables us to derive and estimate the model of Aghion et al. (2005b) at the firm level for the US banking industry. Based on individual bank Call Report data for the period 1984–2004, consistent with theoretical and empirical work by Aghion et al., we find evidence of an inverted-U relationship between competition and innovation that is robust over several different specifications. Further evidence on major structural changes in the US banking industry indicates that banks moved beyond their optimal innovation level and that interstate banking deregulation resulted in lower bank innovation. Policy implications to financial reform and prudential regulation are discussed also.     

Strategic online banking adoption

In this paper we study the determinants of banks’ decisions to adopt a transactional website for their customers. Using a panel of commercial banks in the United States for the period 2003–2006, we show that although bank-specific characteristics are important determinants of banks’ adoption decisions, competition also plays a prominent role. The extent of competition is related to the geographic overlap of banks in different markets and their relative market share in terms of deposits. In particular, banks adopt online banking services earlier in markets where their competitors have already adopted this technology. This paper is one of the first to construct local banking markets using the geographic market definitions delimited by the CASSIDI® Database compiled at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.     

Restructuring,consolidation and competition in Latin American banking markets

This study examines the competitive conditions in the banking industries of eleven Latin American countries for the period 1993–2000. For these countries, the time interval under examination corresponds to an era characterized by substantial reforms to restructure their banking systems, increased consolidation and foreign bank penetration. The banks in our sample are found to be earning their revenues as if operating under monopolistic competition, as in many other developed and emerging financial systems. The results indicate that, overall, market concentration is not significantly related with competitive conduct. At the country level, however, we do observe a decline in competition for Brazil, Chile, and Venezuela in late 1990s which may be attributable to increased consolidation. Further, we observe that deregulation and opening up of the financial markets for foreign participation serves as an important catalyst to increase the competitiveness of banking markets. Higher degree of competition in the sector, in return, is associated with reduced bank margins and profitability but improved cost efficiency.     

竞争与效率——基于我国区域性商业银行的实证研究

针对文献中有关银行业竞争与效率之间关系的争论,本文采用我国区域性城市商业银行和农村商业银行的数据做了进一步的探索。文章采用随机前沿分析法计算银行效率水平,并利用银保监会发布的银行分支许可证信息构建区域竞争指数,从而考察区域银行业竞争程度对银行经营效率的影响。研究印证了竞争程度的增加可以提高区域性商业银行的效率,但竞争度对农村商业银行效率的影响更大。结果表明,我国区域性商业银行中的竞争与效率之间存在非线性关系,过度的竞争会对区域性商业银行的效率造成负面影响。通过对区域性银行跨区经营行为的进一步分析,发现竞争会影响区域性银行跨区经营决策,进而改变其经营效率。具体来讲,当区域性商业银行在银行竞争程度更高的地区设立异地分支机构时,银行效率提高的更多。本文结果对相关文献提供了重要的补充,并为我国区域银行业的发展规划提供了实证依据。     

What explains the low profitability of Chinese banks?

This paper analyzes empirically what explains the low profitability of Chinese banks for the period 1997–2004. We find that better capitalized banks tend to be more profitable. The same is true for banks with a relatively larger share of deposits and for more X-efficient banks. In addition, a less concentrated banking system increases bank profitability, which basically reflects that the four state-owned commercial banks – China’s largest banks – have been the main drag for system’s profitability. We find the same negative influence for China’s development banks (so-called Policy Banks), which are fully state-owned. Instead, more market-oriented banks, such as joint-stock commercial banks, tend to be more profitable, which again points to the influence of government intervention in explaining bank performance in China. These findings should not come as a surprise for a banking system which has long been functioning as a mechanism for transferring huge savings to meet public policy goals.     

Contraste de la ley de Gibrat en la banca comercial brasileña

In recent years Brazil has been one of the countries with major changes in the banking sector. The deregulation process that has taken place since 2002 has brought an increased presence of foreign banks and higher competition, among other aspects. In this context, the objective of this study is to analyze Gibrat's law on Brazilian commercial banks over the period 2002-2013 with the aim of providing evidence for the construction of a banking growth model which guide the country's financial policy. To that end, we employ a methodology based on quartile regressions as a contribution to previous literature. Our overall results reveal the existence of a non-lineal relationship between growth and banks size with an inverted U-shape. These findings allow us to affirm that the relative dispersion of banks size, as well as the sector's concentration, will be reduce in the future years.     

Consolidation and Competition in the Banking Industries of the EU Member and Candidate Countries

This paper investigates competitive conditions in the banking markets of all EU member and candidate countries over the period 1995-2007. The Panzar and Rosse (1987) model is implemented on bank-level data. In particular, the unscaled revenue equation is employed to assess market structure. Country-specific empirical results suggest a wide variation in the competitive conditions of the banking systems in the sampled countries. Nineteen banking systems are characterized as monopolistically competitive, nine as monopolies or perfectly colluding oligopolies, and two as perfectly competitive over the sample period. This study also investigates whether competition conditions changed over the sample period, using 2001 as an endogenously determined break year. The empirical evidence reveals that banking systems became less competitive after that time.