Maintaining Relationships: A Study of the Legal Industry

This article attempts to answer two questions, using Spain as a case study: do savings banks, and the regional banking system in general, have specific forms of activity which may be termed 'regionalising'?; and then, is the quantitative importance of the regional banking system sufficient to ensure that the effects of such behaviour upon the regional distribution of credit will be substantial? The evidence shows that in Spain these institutions have a strongly regionally-oriented character that has greatly contributed to financial convergence. The regional orientation has resulted in relatively low inter-regional differences in access to credit.