The Effects of Regulatory Reform on Competition in the Banking Industry
利用1984-1997年意大利银行业数据，发现监管改革和整合过程改善了竞争条件，并购未增强市场势力，反而降低了边际成本。
The paper analyzes the evolution of competitive conditions in the Italian banking industry using firm-level balance sheet data for the period 1984-1997. Regulatory reform, large-scale consolidation, and competitive pressure from other European countries have changed substantially the banking environment, with potentially offsetting effects on the overall degree of competitiveness. We find that competitive conditions, relatively unchanged until 1992, have improved substantially thereafter, as signaled by the decline in estimated markups. Also, we analyze for the first time the long-run impact of the consolidation process on competition and find no evidence that banks involved in mergers and acquisitions gained market power; at the same time, they exhibit lower than average marginal costs. Finally, after controlling for various factors that may have determined the time pattern of banks' estimated markups, we still detect a significant unexplained drop in our competitive conditions indicators after 1992. Overall, our evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that the deregulation process, which culminated with the implementation of the Second Banking Directive in 1993, significantly contributed to improving bank competition and that it may also have been an important determinant of the consolidation process recorded by the Italian credit system during the 1990s.