The Geographic Flow of Bank Funding and Access to Credit: Branch Networks, Local Synergies, and Competition
57 Pages Posted: 22 May 2019
Date Written: May 2019
Abstract
Geographic dispersion of depositors, borrowers, and banks may prevent funding from flowing to areas of high loan demand, limiting credit access. We provide evidence of geographic imbalance of deposits and loans, and develop a methodology for investigating the contribution to this imbalance of (i) branch networks, (ii) market power, and (iii) scope economies, using US bank-county-year level data. Results are based on a novel measure of deposits and loans imbalance, and estimation of a structural model of bank competition that admits interconnections across locations and between deposit and loan markets, thereby permitting counterfactuals highlighting the role of the three factors.
Keywords: Access to credit, Bank Competition, Branch networks, Economies of scope between deposits and loans, Geographic flow of bank funds
JEL Classification: G21, L13, L51
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation