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Working Paper
Robust non-parametric quantile estimation of efficiency and productivity change in U.S. commercial banking, 1985-2004
This paper describes a non-parametric, unconditional, hyperbolic quantile estimator that unlike traditional non-parametric frontier estimators is both robust to data outliers and has a root-n convergence rate. We use this estimator to examine changes in the efficiency and productivity of U.S. banks between 1985 and 2004. We find that larger banks experienced larger efficiency and productivity gains than small banks, consistent with the presumption that recent changes in regulation and information technology have favored larger banks.
Working Paper
Nonparametric Estimation of Lerner Indices for U.S. Banks Allowing for Inefficiency and Off-Balance Sheet Activities
The Lerner index is widely used to assess firms' market power. However, estimation and interpretation present several challenges, especially for banks, which tend to produce multiple outputs and operate with considerable inefficiency. We estimate Lerner indices for U.S. banks for 2001-18 using nonparametric estimators of the underlying cost and profit functions, controlling for inefficiency, and incorporating banks' off-balance-sheet activities. We find that mis-specification of cost or profit functional forms can seriously bias Lerner index estimates, as can failure to account for ...
Working Paper
New Estimates of the Lerner Index of Market Power for U.S. Banks
The Lerner index is widely used to assess firms' market power. However, estimation and interpretation present several challenges, especially for banks, which tend to produce multiple outputs and operate with considerable inefficiency. We estimate Lerner indices for U.S. banks for 2001-18 using nonparametric estimators of the underlying cost and profit functions, controlling for inefficiency, and incorporating banks' off-balance-sheet activities. We find that mis-specification of cost or profit functional forms can seriously bias Lerner index estimates, as can failure to account for ...
Working Paper
The Evolution of Scale Economies in U.S. Banking
Continued consolidation of the U.S. banking industry and a general increase in the size of banks has prompted some policymakers to consider policies that discourage banks from getting larger, including explicit caps on bank size. However, limits on the size of banks could entail economic costs if they prevent banks from achieving economies of scale. This paper presents new estimates of returns to scale for U.S. banks based on nonparametric, local-linear estimation of bank cost, revenue and profit functions. We report estimates for both 2006 and 2015 to compare returns to scale some seven ...
Working Paper
Consolidation in US banking: which banks engage in mergers?
The number of U.S. commercial banks has declined by some 40 percent since 1984, primarily through mergers of solvent institutions. The relaxation of legal impediments to branching has enabled this consolidation, but specific characteristics of banks that engage in mergers reflect the regulatory process and market structure, as well as the bank's own condition. This paper seeks to quantify the regulatory, market, and financial characteristics that affect the probability of a bank engaging in mergers and the volume of banks it absorbs over time. We examine separately consolidation within ...
Working Paper
Robust nonparametric estimation of efficiency and technical change in U.S. commercial banking
This paper examines the performance of the U.S. commercial banking industry over 1984-2002. Rather than measuring performance relative to the unknown (and difficult-to-estimate) boundary of the production set, performance for a given bank is measured relative to expected maximum output among m banks using no more of each input than the given bank. This approach permits fully non-parametric estimation with vn-consistency avoiding the usual curse of dimensionality that plagues traditional non-parametric efficiency estimators. The resulting estimates are robust with respect to outliers and noise ...
Working Paper
New evidence on the Fed's productivity in providing payments services
As the dominant provider of payments services, the efficiency with which the Federal Reserve provides such services in an important public policy issue. This paper examines the productivity of Federal Reserve check-processing offices during 1980-1999 using non-parametric estimation methods and newly developed methods for non-parametric inference and hypothesis testing. The results support prior studies that found little initial improvement in the Fed's efficiency with the imposition of pricing for Federal Reserve services in 1982. However, we find that median productivity improved ...
Working Paper
The contribution of on-site examination ratings to an emprircal model of bank failures
This paper investigates how well regulator examinations predict bank failures, and how best to incorporate examination information into an econometric model of time-to-failure. We estimate proportional hazard models with time-varying covariates and find that examiner ratings help explain the failure hazard. Both the overall rating of a bank's condition and management, i.e., the composite CAMELS rating, and ratings of specific components contain information. In addition, we find that the marginal "effect" of ratings is non-linear, in that the impact of a rating downgrade on the probability ...