IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eea/boewps/wp2017-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Banking sector concentration, competition and financial stability: the case of the Baltic countries

Author

Listed:
  • Cuestas, Juan Carlos
  • Lucotte, Yannick
  • Reigl, Nicolas

Abstract

This paper empirically assesses the potential nonlinear relationship between competition and bank risk for a sample of commercial banks in the Baltic countries over the period 2000–2014. Competition is measured by two alternative indexes, the Lerner index and the market share, while we consider the Z-score and loan loss reserves as proxies for bank risk. In line with the theoretical predictions of Martinez-Miera and Repullo (2010), we find an inverse U-shaped relationship between competition and financial stability. This then means that above a certain threshold, the lack of competition is likely to exacerbate the individual risk-taking behaviour of banks, and could be detrimental to the stability of the banking sector in the Baltic countries. The threshold is around 0.60 for the Lerner index, and close to 50% for market share in terms of assets. The policy implications are that the existence of such a threshold suggests that the future evolution of the the structure of the banking industry in these countries is of critical importance. Specifically, this implies that policy-makers should place greater emphasis on mergers and acquisitions to avoid any significant increase of banking sector concentration

Suggested Citation

  • Cuestas, Juan Carlos & Lucotte, Yannick & Reigl, Nicolas, 2017. "Banking sector concentration, competition and financial stability: the case of the Baltic countries," Bank of Estonia Working Papers wp2017-7, Bank of Estonia, revised 11 Sep 2017.
    • Handle: RePEc:eea:boewps:wp2017-7
    DOI: 10.23656/25045520/102016/003710.23656/25045520/72017/0145
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.23656/25045520/102016/003710.23656/25045520/72017/0145
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.23656/25045520/102016/003710.23656/25045520/72017/0145?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Brei, Michael & Jacolin, Luc & Noah, Alphonse, 2020. "Credit risk and bank competition in Sub-Saharan Africa," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(C).
    2. Merike Kukk & Alari Paulus & Nicolas Reigl, 2022. "Credit market concentration and systemic risk in Europe," Bank of Estonia Working Papers wp2022-4, Bank of Estonia, revised 24 Mar 2022.
    3. Jéfferson Colombo & Peter Wanke & Jorge Antunes & Abul Kalam Azad, 2022. "Unveiling endogeneity between competition and efficiency in European banks: a robust econometric-neural network approach," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 2(3), pages 1-46, March.
    4. Douglas A. Adu, 2022. "Competition and bank risk-taking in Sub-Saharan Africa countries," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 2(7), pages 1-26, July.
    5. Mateev, Miroslav & Moudud-Ul-Huq, Syed & Sahyouni, Ahmad & Tariq, Muhammad Usman, 2022. "Capital regulation, competition and risk-taking: Policy implications for banking sector stability in the MENA region," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    6. Juan Carlos Cuestas & Yannick Lucotte & Nicolas Reigl, 2022. "The evolution and heterogeneity of credit procyclicality in Central and Eastern Europe," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 911-942, January.
    7. Ines Ghazouani & Nadia Basty, 2023. "Is the relationship between bank stability, competition, and intervention quality nonlinear? Evidence from North African countries," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 35(1), pages 38-51, March.
    8. Cândida Ferreira, 2023. "Competition and Stability in the European Union Banking Sector," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 29(4), pages 207-224, November.
    9. Johannes K. Dreyer & Peter A. Schmid & Victoria Zugrav, 2018. "Individual, Systematic and Systemic Risks in the Danish Banking Sector," Czech Journal of Economics and Finance (Finance a uver), Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, vol. 68(4), pages 320-350, September.
    10. Jagjeevan Kanoujiya & Shailesh Rastogi & Rebecca Abraham & Venkata Mrudula Bhimavarapu, 2023. "Does Competition Affect Financial Distress of Non-Financial Firms in India: A Comparison Using the Lerner Index and Boone Indicator," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 16(7), pages 1-20, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    bank competition; banking sector concentration; market power; Lerner index; financial stability; bank-risk taking; Baltic countries;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation

    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:eea:boewps:wp2017-7. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Peeter Luikmel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/epgovee.html .

    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.