Bank competition and multimarket contact intensity
Abstract This paper analyzes the effect of multimarket contact on bank competition. We propose a completely new multimarket contact indicator that not only considers the existence of contacts between banks, but also their intensity, by analyzing the strength–weakness position of banks in terms of branch numbers in comparison to their rivals in the markets where they coincide. We test the new indicator empirically in the context of the Spanish banking sector. The main results suggest a negative relationship between market power and the number of multimarket contacts, rejecting the hypothesis of tacit collusion in the Spanish banking sector. However, the result changes completely when we cons…
Informal, formal institutions and credit: complements or substitutes?
AbstractThis paper analyses the relationship between informal institutions measured by social trust and the provision of private credit. Research on the trust–finance relationship abounds, although most of it is confined to the micro-level, with far fewer contributions from a wide, cross-country perspective. Considering a sample of 119 economies in the period 1993–2015, results suggest that social trust is an important determinant of private credit, and that its effects are transmitted indirectly via some particular aspects of the quality of economic-judicial institutions. In addition, and contrary to previous findings in related areas, substitutive effects for informal and formal instituti…
The Impact of Monetary Policy on Bank Profitability
This chapter analyzes the effect of the monetary policy on both net interest margin and bank profitability using a panel data from 31 OECD countries over the period 2000–2017. The main results show that expansionary monetary policy measures adopted in numerous economies had a negative impact on net interest margins and, therefore, on bank profitability. The relationship between interest rates and the slope of the yield curve with both the net interest margin and profitability is non-linear, more specifically concave. This suggests that the negative impact of low interest rates and the flat yield curve is greater the lower and flattened they are, respectively. Therefore, a potential normaliz…
Financial inclusion and exclusion across Mexican municipalities
Although in recent years there has been a growth in banking services in Mexico, there is still a significant delay in terms of financial inclusion, which is also very uneven across municipalities. In this context, this paper analyses some of the factors that determine the probability of a municipality being financially included. The results show that financially included municipalities have a large number of inhabitants and high levels of income and education. The analysis also distinguishes between municipalities according to the region in which they are located and to their type of population. In general, rural and in transition municipalities are the least financially included, together …
Determinants of net interest margin: the effect of capital requirements and deposit insurance scheme
This paper analyzes the determinants of net interest margin with a focus on the impact of capital regulation and deposit insurance. We extend the Ho and Saunders (1981) family of models to explicit...
Interest Rates and Net Interest Margins: The Impact of Monetary Policy
In this chapter, we examine the determinants of bank net interest margin, focusing on the effect of interest rates, and thus monetary policy decisions. The analysis is carried with a panel of banks from 32 OECD countries over the period 2003–2014. The results show a quadratic relationship between net interest margins and interest rates, implying that the variation of the latter has a greater effect when interest rates are low. An important policy implication of the results is that there is a trade-off between economic growth and financial stability associated with the impact of expansionary monetary policy when the level of interest rates is very low. As a result, if the current scenario of…
The evolution of market power in European banking
This paper analyses the effect that European financial market integration has had on the evolution of the banks' market power disparities. The results show that market power disparity has narrowed among eurozone banks. The reduction is attributable to the convergence in the average levels of market power of the European banking sectors. In contrast, the disparities observed within each country have remained stable. As a result, the measures adopted to advance towards a single banking market should be complemented by measures at the national level designed to intensify competition among the banks within a given country.