This paper examines the links between productivity and social welfare, with an application to the banking industry. It models spatial price competition between bank branches jointly with banks' decisions on the opening or closing of branches based on profit expectations. The model predicts that...

Spanish banks had to set aside a countercyclical loan loss provision during the period 2000 2004. The amount of such provision as well as the allowance accumulated had to be disclosed by banks. The former creates a natural experiment to test whether banks smooth earnings to mislead investors and...

We examine the consequences of imposing higher capital requirements on banks (as under Basel III or, recently, in the case of large banks in the European context) for bank dynamics in complying with the new standards and for the long-term effects on bank lending rates and the demand for bank...

This paper models the investment behaviour of a multi-asset firm with market power that accumulates valuable intangible assets to complement the IT capital. The investment model is estimated using data from Spanish banks on assets of different nature: material (branches, financial), immaterial...