国际清算银行-银行竞争、信贷成本和经济活动：来自巴西的证据（英）-2023.10-84页_1022kb

Bank Competition, Cost of Credit and Economic Activity: Evidence from Brazil

Summary

This BIS Working Paper examines the impact of bank competition on financial and real economic outcomes using data from Brazil. The study employs a difference-in-differences (DiD) approach, exploiting large bank merger episodes as an exogenous source of variation in local banking market competition.

Key findings:

1. Bank Market Structure: Brazil's banking markets are highly concentrated, with high geographic variation in local concentration.

2. Effect of Reduced Competition on Financial Variables: Following bank mergers:

   • Lending spreads (lending rate minus deposit rate) increase significantly (by approx. 5.88 pp).
   • New credit volume decreases substantially (by approx. 17.13%).
   • These effects are persistent over time and not driven by branch closures, changes in loan maturity, or firm characteristics like age or size.

3. Effect of Reduced Competition on Real Variables: A reduction in bank competition significantly decreases:

   • Employment across most sectors.
   • Wages.
   • Output (by approx. 0.3%).
   • The effects are quantitatively close to the impact of similar shocks in other economies, but significantly larger for a bank-dependent emerging market like Brazil.

4. Model and Counterfactuals:

   • A tractable model of bank competition is developed, where the semi-elasticity of credit demand is a key parameter.
   • The estimated change in spreads following concentration increases is consistent with the model.
   • Counterfactual exercises show:
     • Reducing spreads to the global average (5.43 pp) would increase output by approx. 4.83% and corporate profits by 6.51 pp, boosting capital accumulation.
     • Significant efficiency gains from mergers would be needed (approx. 40%) to compensate for the negative effects of reduced local competition.

Policy Relevance: The results highlight the importance of bank competition for credit markets and the broader economy, especially in developing countries with significant reliance on bank credit.