When there is asymmetric information between investors and firms, credit availability is affected by the value of collateralized productive assets. If liquidation occurs, investors recover a greater value the higher the probability to find a buyer and the higher his willingness to pay to use the...

This paper analyses the relation between competition and concentration in the banking sector. The empirical answer is given by testing a monopolistic competition model of bank branching behaviour on individual bank data at county level (départements and provinces) in France and Italy. We...

We propose a new test to evaluate the impact of horizontal mergers on competition in the banking industry. The test is designed to be applied ex-ante to potential mergers while being parsimonious in terms of data, as it only uses information on branches in local markets. The test is a...

This paper presents a model where bank credit depends upon borrowers' product market structure. We show that a larger number of competitors in the industry may increase credit availability by enhancing the resale value of the collateralized productive assets. We also study how this benefit of...