Banking competition on the market for loans in russia: the impact on credit activity of banks and an effect of the economic crisis of 2008-2009

This paper provides a comprehensive assessment of banking competition on the market for loans in the Russian banking system connecting it to various phases of the business cycle in Russia. Our focus is on price competition, which is measured through the Lerner index of market power. Using Lerner index, we investigate, first, the levels of interest rate markups in the market for loans; second, the influence of these markups on credit activity of banks as well as their relation with the size of banks. Next, we compare our measured Lerner index with three additional competition indicators, i.e. H- statistics of Panzar and Rosse (mix of price and quantity competition), Boone indicator (quantity and quality competition) and Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (quantity competition). For our comparisons, we choose the time period of 2005 Q1 to2012 Q4, i.e. starting from one boom on the market for loans and ending with another boom so that between them there is one episode of macroeconomic and systemic banking crisis that could substantially change the strength of competition. Our estimations show that the impact of competition on credit activity of banks is nonlinear - when price competition is too strict or too weak the credit activity of banks becomes slower. Before the crisis of 2008-2009 increases of both price and quantity competition took place; however, during the crisis these competition improvements were offset by uneven access of banks to refinancing resources and the deterioration of borrowers’ creditworthiness that entailed the rise of risk premium in interest rates on loans. After the crisis, price competition turned back to upward trend again stimulated by the growing boom on the market for retail loans, whereas quantity competition remained rather constrained.