There have been numerous econometric studies of bank scale and scope economies, efficiency, mergers, and market structure and performance in U.S. banking. According to the authors, these studies have come to the following conclusions:<p> Scale: For the very smallest banks, there are scale economies...</p>

The authors use a specialized revenue function to estimate the revenue economies of scope and determine whether banks providing a broad mix of services are able to capitalize on the potential savings in transaction costs afforded their customers. Bank production costs and consumer consumption...

This paper surveys 130 studies that apply frontier efficiency analysis to financial institutions in 21 countries. The primary goals are to summarize and critically review empirical estimates of financial institution efficiency and to attempt to arrive at a consensus view. We find that the...

The recent waves of large mergers and acquisitions in both manufacturing and service industries in the United States raise important questions concerning the public policy tradeoffs between possible gains in operating efficiency versus possible social efficiency losses from a greater exercise of...