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Review of Finance Vol. 13 No. 2 2009

The Impact of Organizational Structure and Lending Technology on Banking Competition

Hans Degryse1; Luc Laeven2; Steven Ongena3

1 CentER – Tilburg University, TILEC and CESifo 1 · 2 International Monetary Fund, CEPR and ECGI 2 · 3 CentER – Tilburg University and CEPR 3

Abstract

We investigate how bank organization shapes banking competition. We show that a bank's geographical lending reach and loan pricing strategy is determined by its own and its rivals’ organizational structure. We estimate the impact of organization on the geographical reach and loan pricing of a large bank. We find that the reach of the bank is smaller when rival banks are large and hierarchically organized, have superior communication technology, have a narrower span of organization, and are closer to a decision unit with lending authority. Rival banks’ size and the number of layers to a decision unit soften spatial pricing.

DOI
10.1093/rof/rfn029
Volume
13
Issue
2
Pages
225-259
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref openalex

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