T he U.S. banking system has consolidated in recent years, and the shares of total banking system assets and deposits held by the very largest banking organizations have increased markedly. The number of commercial banks reached its post-World War II peak of 14,483 banks in 1984. By year-end 2012, the number of commercial banks had declined to 6,096. In 2001, the five largest commercial banks h...

This paper studies the impact of bank mergers on firm-bank lending relationships using information from individual loan contracts in Belgium. We analyse the effects of bank mergers on the probability of borrowers maintaining their lending relationships and on their ability to continue tapping bank credit. The Belgian financial environment reflects a number of interesting features: high banking ...

This article is devoted to look at how the factors micro-loan risks in microfinance are related to the micro-borrowers. In this regard, the present analysis involves the using of a set representative and fundamental variables in our research. The study basically use the socio-economic and socio-demographic features specific to the micro-borrowers, which are expected to affect the repayment dela...

I address the following issue in this paper: how does information sharing among banks about borrowers affect banks’ competition, and ultimately, the interest rate borrowers pay for the loan they take? One would expect that full information sharing among banks reduces lenders’ risk and results in lower lending rates than any other arrangement. This may be the reason why regulators of the banking...