The British retail banking market has changed markedly since the beginning of the 1970s, and important trends and developments have increased the competitive pressures facing banks. The whole nature of competition in British retail banking has altered. New competitors and new forms of...

This paper investigates household access to consumer credit in the UK using information on 58,642 households between 2001 and 2009. Employing a treatment effects model and propensity score matching, we find that non-white households are less likely to have financing compared to white households....

This paper discusses the effects of small banks on economic growth. We first theoretically show that small banks operating at a regional level can spur local economic growth. As compared with big interregional banks, small regional banks are more effective in promoting local economic growth,...

This paper contributes to the bank efficiency literature through an application of recently developed random parameters models for stochastic frontier analysis. We estimate standard fixed and random effects models, and alternative specifications of random parameters models that accommodate...

National measures of competition and macroeconomic activity have been used by researchers in recent years to explain performance and risk differentials across banks. However, such measures may be inappropriate for banks which operate with a regional focus. In this paper we construct measures of...

The recent financial turmoil and bailouts of a large number of banks have raised substantial policy concerns regarding banks that are considered Too-systemically-important-to-fail (TSITF). In this paper, we exploit a sample of bank mergers and acquisitions (M&As) between 1997 and 2008 in nine EU...