Competition in the Banking Sector

This chapter merges recent findings from the empirical banking literature with conventional insights from work on banking competition and regulation. It first reviews and assesses the different methodological approaches pursued to address banking competition. While market structure indicators are easily computable, they may not be overly informative about the competitive conditions in banking markets. The literature now focuses on “non-market structure” indicators such as the Panzar-Rosse H-statistic, the (adjusted) Lerner index, or the Boone indicator. The chapter then structures the discussion on the empirical findings based upon a framework that finds its roots in the different theories of financial intermediation. Other approaches to infer banking competition are also discussed, in particular, the impact that regulation and information sharing between banks may have on banking competition.