Market Size, Service Quality, and Competition in Banking
发现不同人口规模的本地银行市场在竞争性质上惊人相似：市场集中度与规模无关，主导银行数量恒定，但服务质量随市场规模增加而提升，且主导银行服务更好。
Local banking markets depict enormous variation in population size. Yet this paper finds that the nature of bank competition across markets is strikingly similar. First, markets remain similarly concentrated regardless of size. Second, the number of dominant banks is roughly constant across markets of different size; it is the number of fringe banks that increases with market size. Third, service quality increases in larger markets and is higher for dominant banks. The findings suggest that banks use fixed‐cost quality investments to capture the additional demand when market size grows, thereby raising barriers to entry.