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Journal Article
Has antitrust policy in banking become obsolete?
The authors analyze the effect of bank mergers on deposit interest rates, using data on banks responding to the Federal Reserve's Monthly Survey of Selected Deposits over an 11-year period. Their results suggest that banks exercise market power in pricing money market deposits and CD's in their local markets.
Report
Sunk costs, contestability, and the latent contract market
The idea that an industry with sunk costs may be contestable even in the absence of long-term contracts has received little attention from formal economic theory yet is popular among monopolists facing antitrust suits. The paper formally illustrates the argument. In an infinitely repeated game, there exists a class of contestable outcomes in which the monopolist sells only on the spot market and charges low prices along the equilibrium path to prevent customers from resorting to long-term contracts. Then, the crucial test for contestability is the level of transaction costs in the latent ...
Working Paper
Market definition and the analysis of antitrust in banking
In antitrust analysis of bank mergers, banking markets are viewed as geographically local, with a "cluster" of products as the relevant product line. This view is criticized as outdated, now that many bank products are offered by nonbank institutions and financial institutions' operations are increasingly national in scope. This paper reexamines the question of market definition in banking, using two micro data sets uniquely well-suited to the task. We find that local depositories remain the dominant supplier of key financial services to households and small businesses, with geographic ...
Working Paper
Divestiture as an antitrust remedy in bank mergers
The purpose of this study is to determine whether, from a public policy standpoint, divestitures constitute an effective antitrust remedy in bank merger cases. A number of findings emerge from the study: Divested branches have a remarkable survival record; structural changes effected by divestitures tend to persist over time; larger buyers of divested branches tended to be more successful than smaller buyers; divestiture of the target institutions' branches rather than those of applicants proved preferable from an antitrust standpoint; and divested branches selected by the Department of ...
Conference Paper
Antitrust policy in banking: current status and future prospects
Conference Paper
Antitrust policy in banking: comments
Conference Paper
Bank merger activity: the antitrust perspective
Conference Paper
Consolidation in the banking industry: an antitrust perspective