Commercial bank locations and “banking deserts”: a statistical analysis of Milwaukee and Buffalo

Scott Hegerty ()

The Annals of Regional Science, 2016, vol. 56, issue 1, 253-271

Abstract: Although Internet banking is now able to perform many of the functions associated with physical bank branches, these locations still play important roles within their neighborhoods. This is particularly true for low-income, inner-city areas, which often have relatively few traditional banks. This study compares the cases of Milwaukee and Buffalo, both northern “Rust Belt” cities that have experienced manufacturing and population decline. Using both GIS and statistical analysis at the block group level, we confirm the presence of inner-city “cold spots” in both cities using statistical measures. We also find that both bank density and distance are significantly correlated with income and other demographic and economic variables. Statistical tests show that banking “deserts” are poorer and less white than other block groups. Regression analysis shows that for Buffalo, but not Milwaukee, the number of banks in an area is significantly related to income, distance from the CBD, and population density; the vacancy rate is significant while racial makeup is not. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016

Keywords: R3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s00168-015-0736-3 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:spr:anresc:v:56:y:2016:i:1:p:253-271

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://link.springer.com/journal/168

DOI: 10.1007/s00168-015-0736-3

Access Statistics for this article

The Annals of Regional Science is currently edited by Martin Andersson, E. Kim and Janet E. Kohlhase

More articles in The Annals of Regional Science from Springer, Western Regional Science Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().