Determinants of bank’s interest margin in the aftermath of the crisis: the effect of interest rates and the yield curve slope

Empirical Economics - This paper analyses the determinants of net interest margin, focusing on the impact of interest rates and the slope of the yield curve, using a broad panel of data from 32...     

The determinants of efficiency: the case of the Spanish industry

The aim of this paper is to analyse the factors explaining the technical efficiency of Spanish industrial sectors during the period 1991–1994 using the Survey of Business Strategies (SBE) of the Ministry of Industry and Energy. It analyses whether efficiency can be explained by factors external to the firm such as the degree of competition in the markets in which it operates, characteristics of the firm (size, organization, advantages of location, participation of public capital, etc.), as well as the effects of dynamic disturbances that may affect the degree of utilization of the productive capacity.     

Convergence in OECD countries: technical change,efficiency and productivity

The aim of this study is to analyse labour productivity convergence in the OECD countries over the period 1975-90. A nonparametric frontier approach is used to calculate the Malmquist productivity index. By breaking it down, the contribution in the growth of labour productivity of technical progress, of changes in efficiency, and of the accumulation of inputs per worker are quantified. Unlike other studies, the results obtained show that technical change has worked against labour productivity convergence, since it has always been greater in the countries with higher labour productivity.     

Patents,technological inputs and spillovers among regions

This article analyses the importance of different technological inputs (R&D and human capital) and different spillovers in explaining the differences in patenting among Spanish regions in the period 1986 to 2003. The analysis is based on the estimation of a knowledge production function. A region's own R&D activities and human capital are observed to have a positive significant effect on innovation output, measured by the number of patents. R&D spillovers weighted by the distance and the volume of trade flows between regions cause positive effects on a region's patents. However, distance matters more than the intensity of trade flows and the R&D spillover effects between regions are bounded: spillovers from closer regions perform better than spillovers from distant regions. On the opposite side, human capital spillovers do not cause any effect outside the region itself.     

Interest rates,expectations and the credibility of the Bank of Spain

The purpose of the paper is to pinpoint the date of the change of monetary policy regime which occurred in Spain during the year 1984, when it moved away from controlling monetary aggregates towards interest rate targeting. The most likely date for the change is estimated and, surprisingly, there is evidence that agents learned about the new intermediate target quite rapidly.A week after the change, the term structure of interest rates showed how market agents attributed much more informational content to interest rate changes than they had previously. Two types of transitions are tried: a one-step and a gradual logistic swithing function.     

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.     

The determinants of net interest income in the Mexican banking system: An integrated model

This paper analyzes net interest income in the Mexican banking system over the period 1993–2005. Taking as reference the seminal work by Ho and Saunders [Ho, T., Saunders, A., 1981. The determinants of banks interest margins: theory and empirical evidence. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis XVI (4), 581–600] and subsequent extensions by other authors, our study models the net interest margin simultaneously including operating costs and diversification and specialization as determinants of the margin. The results referring to the Mexican case show that its high margins can be explained mainly by average operating costs and by market power. Although non-interest income has increased in recent years, its economic impact is low.     

Explaining the US–EU productivity growth gap: Structural change vs. intra-sectoral effect

This paper proposes a decomposition of labour productivity growth in the EU15 and the the US since the mid 1990s. The results suggest that the EU's relative slowdown is due to modest “pure” gains of productivity within sectors.     

Market Power in European Banking Sectors

We analyze the evolution of market power in the main banking sectors of the European Union. The evolution of the relative margins does not show an increase in the degree of competition within the EU. The explanatory factors of the relative margins most directly related to market power are not significant, and even have a negative influence (concentration in the deposits market). The size and efficiency of banks, default risk, and the economic cycle have a notable capacity to explain the behavior of the market power. The results show the inadequacy of using concentration measures as proxy for the competition environment in banking markets.