Developments in the Banking Integration Process of the New EU Member States

Abstract

The integration of the banking sector represents a key component of the whole European integration process, as banks are, in many European countries the main suppliers of funds to the economy. The academic literature on this subject provides a split view on the integration of the European banking sector, this process being divided between the EU-15 countries and the new member states. In this context and considering the relative homogeneity of the new member states, regarding their transition from centralised economies to market economies and afterwards their EU ascension, the aim of our paper is to analyze if the return on assets of the banks from these states converge toward a common value, this fact underling a deepening of the banking integration process. In order to achieve this we have used a modified version of the partially adjustment equation, measuring the speed of convergence toward a common value of the return to assets, while also testing the statistical significance of the obtained results.