Do Belgian banks have power vis-a-vis the Minister of Finance?.

Finance; Power;

Softening Competition by Enhancing Entry: An Example from the Banking Industry

We show that competing firms relax overall competition by lowering future barriers to entry. We illustrate our findings in a two-period model with adverse selection where banks strategically commit to disclose borrower information. By doing this, they invite rivals to enter their market. Disclosure of borrower information increases an entrant’s second-period profits. This dampens competition for serving the first-period marketbarriers to entry, asymmetric information, switching costs, banking competition.

The Impact of Competition on Bank Orientation and Specialization (new titel: The impact of competition on bank orientation)

How do banks react to increased interbank competition? Recent banking theory offers conflicting predictions about the impact of competition on bank orientation - i.e., the choice of relationship based versus transactional banking - and bank industry specialization. We empirically investigate the impact of interbank competition on bank branch orientation and specialization. We employ a unique data set containing detailed information on bank-firm relationships and industry classification. We find that bank branches facing stiff local competition engage relatively more in relationship-based lending but specialize somewhat less in a particular industry. Our results illustrate that competition and relationships are not necessarily inimical.bank orientation, bank industry specialization, competition, lending relationships

The impact of bank and non-bank financial institutions on local economic growth in China.

Impact; Growth;

Softening Competition by Enhancing Entry: An Example from the Banking Industry

We show that competing firms relax overall competition by lowering future barriers to entry. We illustrate our findings in a two-period model with adverse selection where banks strategically commit to disclose borrower information. By doing this, they invite rivals to enter their market. Disclosure of borrower information increases an entrant's second-period profits. This dampens competition for serving the first-period market.barriers to entry; asymmetric information; switching costs; banking competition

The Impact of Technology and Regulation on the Geographical Scope of Banking

We review how technological advances and changes in regulation may shape the (future) geographical scope of banking. We first review how both physical distance and the presence of borders currently affect bank lending conditions (loan pricing and credit availability) and market presence (branching and servicing). Next we discuss how technology and regulation have altered this impact and analyse the current state of the European banking sector. We discuss both theoretical contributions and empirical work and highlight open questions along the way. We draw three main lessons from the current theoretical and empirical literature: (1) Bank lending to small businesses in Europe may be characterized both by (local) spatial pricing and resilient (regional and/or national) market segmentation; (2) Because of informational asymmetries in the retail market, bank mergers and acquisitions seem the optimal route of entering another market, long before cross-border servicing or direct entry are economically feasible; (3) Current technological and regulatory developments may to a large extent remain impotent in further dismantling the various residual but mutually reinforcing frictions in the retail banking markets in Europe. We conclude the paper by offering pertinent policy recommendations based on these three lessons.geographical scope, banking, lending relationships, technology, and regulation.

Distance, Lending Relationships, and Competition

A recent string of theoretical papers highlights the importance of geographical distance in explaining pricing and availability of loans to small firms. Lenders located in the vicinity of small firms have significantly lower monitoring and transaction costs, and hence considerable market power if competing financiers are located relatively far. We directly study the effect on loan conditions of the geographical distance between firms, the lending bank, and all other banks in the vicinity. For our study, we employ detailed contract information from more than 15,000 bank loans to small firms and control for relevant relationship, loan contract, bank branch, firm, and regional characteristics. We report the first comprehensive evidence on the occurrence of spatial price discrimination in bank lending. Loan rates decrease in the distance between the firm and the lending bank and increase similarly in the distance between the firm and competing banks. Both effects are statistically significant and economically relevant, are robust to changes in model specifications and variable definitions, and are seemingly not driven by the modest changes over time in lending technology we infer.spatial price discrimination, bank credit, lending relationships

Opt In Versus Opt Out: A Free-Entry Analysis of Privacy Policies

There is much debate on how the flow of information between firms should be organized, and whether existing privacy laws should be amended. We offer a welfare comparison of the three main current policies towards consumer privacy — anonymity, opt in, and opt out — within a two-period model of localized competition. We show that when consumers find it too costly to opt in or opt out, privacy policies shape firms’ ability to collect and use customer information, and affect their pricing strategy and entry decision differently. The free-entry analysis reveals that social welfare is non-monotonic in the degree of privacy protection. Opt out is the socially preferred privacy policy while opt in socially underperforms anonymity. Consumers never opt out and choose to opt in only when its cost is sufficiently low. Only when opting in is cost-free do the opt-in and opt-out privacy policies coincide.privacy, price discrimination, monopolistic competition, welfare

Distance, lending relationships and competition.

Competition;

The impact of competition on bank orientation and specialization.

Competition; Impact;