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Journal Article
Delivering deposit services: ATMs versus branches
Working Paper
Cost savings from electronic payments and ATMs in Europe
Electronic payments are considerably cheaper than their paper-based alternatives. Similarly, ATMs are a more cost-efficient way to deliver certain depositor services than are branch offices. As the share of electronic payments in 12 European countries rose from 0.43 in 1987 to 0.79 in 1999 and ATMs expanded while the number of branch offices was constant, bank operating costs are estimated to be $32 billion lower than they otherwise might have been, saving 0.38% of the 12 nations' GDP. The authors' results are robust to the form of cost function estimated-composite, Fourier, or translog. ; ...
Working Paper
Payment network scale economies, SEPA, and cash replacement
The goal of SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) is to facilitate the emergence of a competitive, intra-European market by making cross-border payments as easy as domestic transactions. With crossborder inter-operability for electronic payments, card transactions will increasingly replace cash and checks for all types of payments. Using different methods, the authors estimate card and other payment network scale economies for Europe. These indicate substantial cost efficiency gains if processing is consolidated across borders rather than "piggybacked" onto existing national operations. Cost ...
Working Paper
Consistency conditions for regulatory analysis of financial institutions: a comparison of frontier efficiency methods
We propose a set of consistency conditions that frontier efficiency measures should meet to be most useful for regulatory analysis or other purposes. The efficiency estimates should be consistent in their efficiency levels, rankings, and identification of best and worst firms; consistent over time and with competitive conditions in the market; and consistent with standard nonfrontier measures of performance. We provide evidence on these conditions by evaluating and comparing efficiency estimates on U.S. bank efficiency from variants of all four of the major approaches--DEA, SFA, TFA, and ...
Discussion Paper
Scale economies at automated clearinghouses
Discussion Paper
Bank examination data as predictors of bank net loan losses
Working Paper
The effects of megamergers on efficiency and prices: evidence from a bank profit function
This paper examines the efficiency and price effects of mergers by applying a frontier profit function to data on bank ``megamergers.'' We find that merged banks experience a statistically significant 16 percentage point average increase in profit-efficiency rank relative to other large banks. Most of the improvement is from increasing revenues, including a shift in outputs from securities to loans, a higher-valued product. Improvements were greatest for the banks with the lowest efficiencies prior to merging, who therefore had the greatest capacity for improvement. By comparison, the effects ...
Working Paper
Competition in bank-provided payment services
Banks supply payment services that underpin the smooth operation of the economy. To ensure an efficient payment system, it is important to maintain competition among payment service providers, but data available to gauge the degree of competition are quite limited. We propose and implement a frontier- based method to assess relative competition in bank-provided payment services. Billion dollar banks account for around 90 percent of assets in the U.S., and those with around $4 to $7 billion in assets turn out to be both the most and the least competitive in payment services, not the very ...
Working Paper
Measurement and efficiency issues in commercial banking