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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 ...
Journal Article
Trends in the efficiency of Federal Reserve check processing operations
The Monetary Control Act of 1980 requires the Federal Reserve to charge customers for financial services, with the intent of improving the efficiency with which Fed offices deliver those services. Prior studies found little improvement in the efficiency of Fed check processing operations after pricing was implemented in 1982. This article examines the efficiency of Fed check operations using a longer sample period (1980:Q1?2003:Q3) than previous studies and new methods for estimating efficiency. The authors find that the median office became somewhat less efficient when pricing was ...
Journal Article
Turbulent Years for U.S. Banks: 2000-20
The first 20 years of the twenty-first century have presented U.S. banks with three recessions, long periods of very low interest rates, and increased regulation. The number of commercial banks operating in the United States declined by 51 percent during this period. This article examines the performance of U.S. commercial banks from 2000 through 2020. An overall picture is provided by examining the evolution of assets, deposits, loans, and other financial characteristics over the period. In addition, new estimates of technical inefficiency are provided, offering additional insight into ...
Working Paper
Are U.S. banks too large?
The number of commercial banks in the United States has fallen by more than 50 percent since 1984. This consolidation of the U.S. banking industry and the accompanying large increase in average (and median) bank size have prompted concerns about the effects of consolidation and increasing bank size on market competition and on the number of banks that regulators deem ?too big to fail.? Agency problems and perverse incentives created by government policies are often cited as reasons why many banks of pursued acquisitions and growth, though bankers often point to economies of scale. This paper ...
Working Paper
Robust, dynamic nonparametric benchmarking: the evolution of cost-productivity and efficiency among U.S. credit unions
This paper develops a new methodology for estimating cost-productivity and efficiency change that benchmarks the performance of individual firms against an estimated a-quantile. We adapt the estimators of Daouia and Simar (2007) and Wheelock and Wilson (2008a) to the estimation of cost efficiency where input prices and some outputs are fixed. Theoretical results demonstrate that our new estimator retains the root-n convergence, asymptotic normality, and other desirable properties of the original estimators. We show how the estimator can be used to construct a cost analog of the widely-used ...
Working Paper
Are credit unions too small?
Since 1985, the share of U.S. depository institution assets held by credit unions has nearly doubled, and the average (inflation-adjusted) size of credit unions has increased over 600 percent. We use a non-parametric local-linear estimator to estimate a cost relationship for credit unions and derive estimates of ray-scale and expansion-path scale economies. We employ a dimension-reduction technique to reduce estimation error, and bootstrap methods for inference. We find substantial evidence of increasing returns to scale across the range of sizes observed among credit unions, suggesting that ...
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 ...