Is Banking a Natural Monopoly?

Abstract

This paper reviews the arguments behind claims that banking is a natural monopoly. There are economies in reserve-holding and asset diversification, but the marginal return to scale tends to fall as the bank grows, and there is not particular reason to expect these economies to be large enough to produce a natural monopoly. The paper then examines three spurious arguments for natural monopoly--the arguments (1) that competitive note issue would lead to inflation, and that economies of (2) standardization and (3) confidence make banking a natural monopoly. The first argument presupposes that competition has already been suppressed, the second is not a natural monopoly argument at all, and the third suffers from other drawbacks. The conclusion that banking is not a natural monopoly is supported by the evidence from historical banking systems and by a large volume of empirical work on economies of scale in banking. Copyright 1992 by WWZ and Helbing & Lichtenhahn Verlag AG