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.     

An analysis of closed-end funds discounts viewed from a lack of redemption perspective

We examine the behavior of discounts for an extensive sample of U.S. closed-end funds (CEF) undergoing open-ending. Share prices increase and discounts reduce at the time of announcement. The 2-day abnormal return is approximately one half of the pre-announcement discount. We test and find support for the investor sentiment, transaction costs, and portfolio liquidity hypotheses controlling for fund characteristics, tax liability, and dividends yield. The role of investor sentiment declines following the announcement. We decompose the pre-announcement discount into its structural and idiosyncratic parts, and find that there is a greater reduction of the idiosyncratic part of the discount at the time of announcement. The correlation between discount of CEF undergoing open-ending and that of an index of similar funds declines as the CEF nears open-ending.     

Geographic Deregulation and Competition in the U.S. Banking Industry

We examine the effects of geographic deregulation on state‐level competition in U.S. banking markets over the period 1976‐2005. The empirical results confirm that the U.S. banks in general operated under monopolistic competition during the period examined. After partitioning the sample based on bank size we find that the market competition for large banks in Delaware, Oregon, and Rhode Island can be characterized as monopolistic while small banks in Arizona and Massachusetts seem to have operated under the conditions of perfect competition. The removal of geographic restrictions appears to have very limited and non‐uniform effect on state‐level competitive conduct. There is some evidence that the U.S. banking industry might have actually experienced a less competitive behavior in recent years due to increased market power of larger banks.