A structural empirical analysis of retail banking competition: The case of Hungary

In this paper we analyze the degree of competition in the Hungarian household credit and deposit markets. We estimate discrete-choice, multinomial logit deposit service and loan demand functions for each bank and calculate the corresponding price elasticities. Two models of the banking industry are considered: a static, differentiated product Nash-Bertrand oligopoly (as non-collusive benchmark) and a cartel. With estimated marginal costs and observed interest rates we calculate the price-cost margins and compare these to the theoretically implied ones. We find that in our sample period the competition in the Hungarian banking sector is low, i.e. price-cost margins are high.