Potential employment effects of the restructuring of retail banking

The author explains that two steps being taken by banks to restructure their branch systems--the substitution of supermarket branches for traditional offices and the expansion of telephone banking through twenty-four-hour phone centers--may adversely affect employment in New York State as well as across the country.Banks and banking - Customer services ; Branch banks

The expanding geographic reach of retail banking markets

In the view of most policymakers and economists, competition in retail banking takes place in local markets the size of a single county or metropolitan area. This article presents evidence that the locus of banking competition has in recent years shifted to larger geographic arenas. The author's review of 1997 survey data reveals that many banks set uniform rates for both deposits and retail loans across an entire state or broad regions of a large state. Regression analysis of the relationship between retail deposit rates and measures of market concentration further supports this expansion in market size: the clear relationship that earlier studies detected between individual banks' deposit rates and measures of concentration at the local level is no longer evident, while a relationship does emerge at the state level.Bank competition ; Bank deposits ; Retail trade ; Local finance

Technology: driving specialization or enabling diversification (or both)?

Financial services industry ; Technology

The globalization of financial markets and the effectiveness of monetary policy instruments

Monetary policy ; Money market ; Interest rates

The household demand for money: estimates from cross-sectional data

Money ; Consumer behavior

Banks' payments-driven revenues

The amount of fee income earned by the banking sector suggests that the significance of payment services has been understated or overlooked. This paper attempts to develop a clearer picture of the importance of payment services to the industry by delineating the payments area broadly and by analyzing data disclosed in bank holding company annual reports on sources of noninterest income. ; We find that payment services bring in from one-third to two-fifths of the combined operating revenue of the twenty-five largest bank holding companies. This contribution to revenue is considerably larger than commonly appreciated and indicates that the production and distribution of payment services is one of the core activities of commercial banks. The greater-than-expected importance of payment services has several implications for the identification and measurement of the banking sector's output and for theories of the fundamental nature of commercial banking.Bank profits ; Payment systems