IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/buecrs/v67y2015is1ps74-s96.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does Monopolistic Competition Exist In The Mena Region? Evidence From The Banking Sector

Author

Listed:
  • Michael L. Polemis

Abstract

type="main"> The goal of this paper is to empirically assess the level of banking competition in selected Middle East and Northern African (MENA) countries. The analysis employs the estimation of a non-structural indicator (H-statistic) introduced by Panzar and Rosse and draws upon a panel dataset of eight MENA countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates) over the period 1997–2012. The empirical findings are robust towards three different panel data econometric techniques (Ordinary Least Squares, Pooled Generalized Least Squares with Fixed Effects, and Generalized Method of Moments) and consistent with other similar studies, providing sufficient evidence in favour of a banking monopolistic competition regime. Furthermore, the estimation of three other alternative measures of competition (Lerner index, adjusted Lerner index, and conduct parameter) provides similar results, revealing that the banking sector in the MENA region is characterized by a low level of Significant Market Power (SMP). Overall, the analysis shows that, despite similarities in the process of financial regulatory reforms undertaken in the eight MENA countries, the observed competition levels of banks vary substantially, with Algeria and Morocco consistently outperforming the rest of the region.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael L. Polemis, 2015. "Does Monopolistic Competition Exist In The Mena Region? Evidence From The Banking Sector," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 67(S1), pages 74-96, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:buecrs:v:67:y:2015:i:s1:p:s74-s96
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/boer.12046
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Molyneux, Phil & Lloyd-Williams, D. M. & Thornton, John, 1994. "Competitive conditions in european banking," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 445-459, May.
    2. Yildirim, H. Semih & Philippatos, George C., 2007. "Restructuring, consolidation and competition in Latin American banking markets," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 629-639, March.
    3. Panzar, John C & Rosse, James N, 1987. "Testing for "Monopoly" Equilibrium," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 443-456, June.
    4. Stijn Claessens & Luc Laeven, 2004. "What drives bank competition? Some international evidence," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, pages 563-592.
    5. Hansen, Lars Peter, 1982. "Large Sample Properties of Generalized Method of Moments Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 1029-1054, July.
    6. Shaffer, Sherrill, 2004. "Comment on "What Drives Bank Competition? Some International Evidence" by Stijn Claessens and Luc Laeven," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(3), pages 585-592, June.
    7. Jacob Bikker & Laura Spierdijk & Paul Finnie, 2006. "Misspecifiation of the Panzar-Rosse Model: Assessing Competition in the Banking Industry," DNB Working Papers 114, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    8. Lau, Lawrence J., 1982. "On identifying the degree of competitiveness from industry price and output data," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 10(1-2), pages 93-99.
    9. Shaffer, Sherrill, 1983. "The Rosse-Panzar statistic and the Lerner index in the short run," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 11(1-2), pages 175-178.
    10. Al-Muharrami, Saeed & Matthews, Kent & Khabari, Yusuf, 2006. "Market structure and competitive conditions in the Arab GCC banking system," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(12), pages 3487-3501, December.
    11. Manthos D. Delis & K. Christos Staikouras & Panagiotis T. Varlagas, 2008. "On the Measurement of Market Power in the Banking Industry," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(7‐8), pages 1023-1047, September.
    12. Maudos, Joaquin & Fernandez de Guevara, Juan, 2006. "Banking competition, financial dependence and economic growth," MPRA Paper 15254, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2006.
    13. Goddard, John & Molyneux, Philip & Wilson, John O.S. & Tavakoli, Manouche, 2007. "European banking: An overview," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(7), pages 1911-1935, July.
    14. Turk-Ariss, Rima, 2009. "Competitive behavior in Middle East and North Africa banking systems," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 693-710, May.
    15. Barbara Casu & Claudia Girardone, 2006. "Bank Competition, Concentration And Efficiency In The Single European Market," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 74(4), pages 441-468, July.
    16. Shaffer, Sherrill, 1983. "Non-structural measures of competition : Toward a synthesis of alternatives," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 12(3-4), pages 349-353.
    17. Angelini, Paolo & Cetorelli, Nicola, 2003. "The Effects of Regulatory Reform on Competition in the Banking Industry," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 35(5), pages 663-684, October.
    18. Shaffer, Sherrill, 2004. "Patterns of competition in banking," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 287-313.
    19. Mamatzakis, E. & Staikouras, C. & Koutsomanoli-Fillipaki, N., 2005. "Competition and concentration in the banking sector of the South Eastern European region," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 192-209, June.
    20. Anzoategui Diego & Martinez Peria Maria S. & Rocha Roberto R, 2010. "Bank Competition in the Middle East and Northern Africa Region," Review of Middle East Economics and Finance, De Gruyter, vol. 6(2), pages 26-48, November.
    21. Sherrill Shaffer, 2002. "Conduct in a Banking Monopoly," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 20(3), pages 221-238, May.
    22. Mr. Yu Sun, 2011. "Recent Developments in European Bank Competition," IMF Working Papers 2011/146, International Monetary Fund.
    23. Maudos, Joaquin & Fernandez de Guevara, Juan, 2004. "Factors explaining the interest margin in the banking sectors of the European Union," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(9), pages 2259-2281, September.
    24. Jacob A. Bikker & Sherrill Shaffer & Laura Spierdijk, 2012. "Assessing Competition with the Panzar-Rosse Model: The Role of Scale, Costs, and Equilibrium," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(4), pages 1025-1044, November.
    25. De Bandt, Olivier & Davis, E. Philip, 2000. "Competition, contestability and market structure in European banking sectors on the eve of EMU," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 1045-1066, June.
    26. Delipalla, Sophia & O'Donnell, Owen, 2001. "Estimating tax incidence, market power and market conduct: The European cigarette industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 19(6), pages 885-908, May.
    27. Bresnahan, Timothy F., 1982. "The oligopoly solution concept is identified," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 10(1-2), pages 87-92.
    28. Waleed Murjan & Cristina Ruza, 2002. "The competitive nature of the Arab Middle Eastern banking markets," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 8(4), pages 267-274, November.
    29. Shaffer, Sherrill, 1982. "Competition, conduct and demand elasticity," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 10(1-2), pages 167-171.
    30. Christos K. Staikouras & Anastasia Koutsomanoli‐Fillipaki, 2006. "Competition and Concentration in the New European Banking Landscape," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 12(3), pages 443-482, June.
    31. Beck, Thorsten & Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Levine, Ross, 2006. "Bank concentration, competition, and crises: First results," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 1581-1603, May.
    32. Michael L. Polemis, 2014. "Did financial crisis alter the level of competition in the EMU banks?," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(15), pages 1065-1069, October.
    33. Fernandez de Guevara, Juan & Maudos, Joaquin & Perez, Francisco, 2007. "Integration and competition in the European financial markets," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 26-45, February.
    34. A. P. Lerner, 1934. "The Concept of Monopoly and the Measurement of Monopoly Power," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 1(3), pages 157-175.
    35. David Genesove & Wallace P. Mullin, 1998. "Testing Static Oligopoly Models: Conduct and Cost in the Sugar Industry, 1890-1914," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 29(2), pages 355-377, Summer.
    36. Michael Koetter & James W. Kolari & Laura Spierdijk, 2012. "Enjoying the Quiet Life under Deregulation? Evidence from Adjusted Lerner Indices for U.S. Banks," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(2), pages 462-480, May.
    37. Bikker, Jacob A. & Haaf, Katharina, 2002. "Competition, concentration and their relationship: An empirical analysis of the banking industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(11), pages 2191-2214, November.
    38. Jerry Hausman & Agustin Ros, 2013. "An econometric assessment of telecommunications prices and consumer surplus in Mexico using panel data," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 284-304, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael L. Polemis & Thanasis Stengos, 2019. "Does competition prevent industrial pollution? Evidence from a panel threshold model," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 98-110, January.
    2. Apergis, Nicholas & Fafaliou, Irene & Polemis, Michael L., 2016. "New evidence on assessing the level of competition in the European Union banking sector: A panel data approach," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 395-407.
    3. Charalampos Agiropoulos & Michael L. Polemis & Michael Siopsis & Sotiris Karkalakos, 2022. "Revisiting the finance‐growth nexus: A socioeconomic approach," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(3), pages 2762-2783, July.
    4. Polemis, Michael L. & Fafaliou, Irene, 2015. "Electricity regulation and FDIs spillovers in the OECD: A panel data econometric approach," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 110-123.
    5. Chaffai, Mohamed & Coccorese, Paolo, 2023. "Banking market power and its determinants: New insights from MENA countries," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    6. Raéf Bahrini, 2017. "Efficiency Analysis of Islamic Banks in the Middle East and North Africa Region: A Bootstrap DEA Approach," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 5(1), pages 1-13, February.
    7. Colesnic, Olga & Kounetas, Konstantinos & Michael, Polemis, 2020. "Estimating risk efficiency in Middle East banks before and after the crisis: A metafrontier framework," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).
    8. Polemis, Michael L. & Tzeremes, Nickolaos G., 2019. "Competitive conditions and sectors’ productive efficiency: A conditional non-parametric frontier analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 276(3), pages 1104-1118.
    9. Christos Agiakloglou & Michael Polemis, 2018. "The Impact of Structural Reforms on Telecommunications Performance," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 209-222, June.
    10. Cañón, Carlos & Cortés, Edgar & Guerrero, Rodolfo, 2022. "Bank competition and the price of credit: Evidence using Mexican loan-level data," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 56-74.
    11. Hind Alnafisah & Lama Alwohaibi, 2024. "The Cost Efficiency and Competition Relationship: Evidence from Saudi Arabian Banks and Non-Structural Approaches to Analysis," Economies, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-13, January.
    12. Issa, Samah & Girardone, Claudia & Snaith, Stuart, 2022. "Banking competition, convergence and growth across macro-regions of MENA," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 534-549.
    13. Hatem Elfeituri & Konstantinos Vergos, 2019. "Is the MENA banking sector competitive?," Journal of Banking Regulation, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 20(2), pages 124-135, June.
    14. Fujiwara Kenji, 2020. "The Effects of Entry when Monopolistic Competition and Oligopoly Coexist," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 20(2), pages 1-11, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Apergis, Nicholas & Fafaliou, Irene & Polemis, Michael L., 2016. "New evidence on assessing the level of competition in the European Union banking sector: A panel data approach," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 395-407.
    2. Jacob A. Bikker & Sherrill Shaffer & Laura Spierdijk, 2012. "Assessing Competition with the Panzar-Rosse Model: The Role of Scale, Costs, and Equilibrium," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(4), pages 1025-1044, November.
    3. Li, Shaofang & Marinč, Matej, 2016. "Competition in the clearing and settlement industry," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 134-162.
    4. Coccorese, Paolo, 2009. "Market power in local banking monopolies," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(7), pages 1196-1210, July.
    5. Tai-Hsin Huang & Nan-Hung Liu & Subal C. Kumbhakar, 2018. "Joint estimation of the Lerner index and cost efficiency using copula methods," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 799-822, March.
    6. Huang, Tai-Hsin & Hu, Chu-Nan & Chang, Bao-Guang, 2018. "Competition, efficiency, and innovation in Taiwan’s banking industry — An application of copula methods," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 362-375.
    7. Tai-Hsin Huang & Nan-Hung Liu, 2014. "Bank competition in transition countries: Are those markets really in equilibrium?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 47(4), pages 1283-1316, December.
    8. Andrieş, Alin Marius & Căpraru, Bogdan, 2014. "The nexus between competition and efficiency: The European banking industries experience," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 566-579.
    9. Ronald Kumar & Arvind Patel, 2014. "Exploring competitiveness in banking sector of a small island economy: a study of Fiji," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(6), pages 3169-3183, November.
    10. Coccorese, Paolo & Pellecchia, Alfonso, 2013. "Multimarket contact, competition and pricing in banking," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 187-214.
    11. Mazen Mohamd Diwani, 2023. "How competitive is the Syrian banking sector? Empirical evidence from ‘pre/post’ war Syria," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 347-389, August.
    12. Tabak, Benjamin M. & Fazio, Dimas M. & Cajueiro, Daniel O., 2012. "The relationship between banking market competition and risk-taking: Do size and capitalization matter?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(12), pages 3366-3381.
    13. Nicholas Apergis & Michael L. Polemis, 2016. "Competition and efficiency in the MENA banking region: a non-structural DEA approach," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(54), pages 5276-5291, November.
    14. Brissimis, Sophocles N. & Delis, Manthos D., 2011. "Bank-level estimates of market power," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 212(3), pages 508-517, August.
    15. Abdul Latif Alhassan & Nicholas Biekpe, 2017. "Liberalization Outcomes and Competitive Behaviour in an Emerging Insurance Market," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 29(2), pages 122-138, June.
    16. Delis, Manthos D., 2010. "Competitive conditions in the Central and Eastern European banking systems," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 268-274, October.
    17. Huang, Tai-Hsin & Chiang, Dien-Lin & Chao, Shih-Wei, 2017. "A new approach to jointly estimating the Lerner index and cost efficiency for multi-output banks under a stochastic meta-frontier framework," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 212-226.
    18. Moch, Nils, 2013. "Competition in fragmented markets: New evidence from the German banking industry in the light of the subprime crisis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 2908-2919.
    19. Bing Xu & Adrian Van Rixtel & Michiel Van Leuvensteijn, 2013. "Measuring bank competition in China: a comparison of new versus conventional approaches applied to loan markets," BIS Working Papers 422, Bank for International Settlements.
    20. Hong Liu & Philip Molyneux & Linh H. Nguyen, 2012. "Competition and risk in South East Asian commercial banking," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(28), pages 3627-3644, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:buecrs:v:67:y:2015:i:s1:p:s74-s96. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0307-3378 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.