The Italian and German banking systems shared similar characteristics early in the 1990s but have evolved in different directions since then: Italy privatized its publicly-owned banks while Germany has maintained a large share of state-owned savings banks. Contemporaneously, banks in both markets engaged heavily in mergers and acquisitions. We analyze how these activities have affected banks' productivity in the period 1994-2004, differentiating between technical change, efficiency change and scale economies. We find that privatized banks experienced a significant increase in productivity, especially if they subsequently merged with other banks. German banks were still able to increase their productivity through consolidation.
No. 722 - The effects of privatization and consolidation on bank productivity: comparative evidence from Italy and Germany
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- No. 722 - The effects of privatization and consolidation on bank productivity: comparative evidence from Italy and Germany pdf 958.3 KB Data pubblicazione: 05 October 2009