Nueva evidencia empírica sobre las economías de escala en el sector bancario

Abstract

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the European banking system have been fostered mainly by the financial liberalization and integration processes occurred in recent years. The existence of economies of scalewithin this context represent one of the most relevant issues. In any event, some recent studies suggest the existence of substantial economies of scale as opposed to the previous empirical evidence. Some of the most relevant results of a recent and wider study that employed an innovative methodology to compute economies of scale in Spanish savings banks during 1986-2000 arereported. The study suggest the existence of sizeableeconomies of scale as well as some significant differences among size groups. Finally, this study shows that expost observed actual cost changes do not meet exante predictions on cost behavior, a result that may be explained by unobservable (mainly organizational and cultural) differences in merger processes.