The efficiency of bank branches

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Berger, AN; Leusner, JH; Mingo, JJ
• 署名单位: University of Pennsylvania; University of Chicago
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF MONETARY ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3932
• DOI: 10.1016/S0304-3932(97)00035-4
• 发表日期: 1997
• 页码: 141-162
• 关键词: bank; EFFICIENCY; branch; merger; scale

摘要

An understanding of bank branch efficiency may help resolve a number of conceptual, measurement, and policy questions about efficiency at the bank level. We measure the efficiency of over 760 branches of a large U.S. commercial bank. We find that there are about twice as many branches as would minimize costs, but this may be optimal from a profitability standpoint because 'overbranching' raises revenues from providing extra customer convenience. X-inefficiencies are quite large, over 20% of operating costs. These findings may help explain some efficiency results commonly found in bank-level analysis, and have important implications regarding bank M&As and interstate branching.