Market Power and Efficiency in Banking: The Case of USA and Canada

Abstract

The banking markets of USA and Canada have gone through the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and many other changes during the period 2003-15. The USA banking market was impacted by the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), and several mergers occurred, while the extent of the GFC’s impact on Canada was much less severe, and there was no major merger and acquisition activity. This study compares the impact of changing market concentration and power on the efficiency of the major banks in both the countries, using stochastic frontier analysis. A significant impact of GFC is observed on market power, concentration, and bank efficiency during the 2007-09 period. Overall, Canadian banks posted better efficiency scores than their US counterparts. We find that market power had a positive impact and market concentration a negative impact on bank efficiency. Market power is used to lower the cost of funds and increase the price of loans to achieve an optimal level of performance (from the banks’ perspective). The paper contributes by integrating competition measures into the study of efficiency, demonstrating that inclusion of efficiency allows a more precise estimation of the frontier. The paper also has implications for the regulation of the banking sector, particularly with regard to competition.