Overcapacities in banking: Measurement, trends and determinants

Sandor Gardo and Benjamin Klaus

Economic Modelling, 2020, vol. 91, issue C, 819-834

Abstract: Global banks face profitability challenges since the global financial crisis. Besides cyclical factors, structural features such as overcapacities have been identified as root causes. While policymakers agree on the need for bank consolidation, there is less consensus on the definition and measurement of overcapacities in banking. This paper contributes by conceptualising and formalising the different dimensions of overcapacities in banking and by constructing a novel measure thereof. In addition, it empirically tests the main determinants of overcapacities in banking from 2006 to 2017 and assesses their relative importance. The results indicate that non-bank competition, the interest rate environment and bank business models are the most important driving factors of banking sector overcapacities. This is because shadow banks, benefitting from regulatory arbitrage, have altered banks’ capacity needs, low rates compressed margins and increased pressure to improve cost efficiencies, and retail-oriented business models have operated extensive branch networks entailing heavy fixed costs.

Keywords: Overcapacity; Bank size; Bank competition; Bank efficiency; Composite indicator (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C12 C23 G21 L1 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264999319319716
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Overcapacities in banking: measurements, trends and determinants (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:91:y:2020:i:c:p:819-834

DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2020.05.005

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Modelling is currently edited by S. Hall and P. Pauly

More articles in Economic Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().