Essays on the Microeconomics of Banking

Abstract

Essays on the Microeconomics of Banking Pavel Dvořák Abstrakt v češtině - dokument nenalezen

Essays on the Microeconomics of Banking - Dissertation Abstract The thesis consists of four chapters and is primarily a contribution to the literature on the microeconomics of banking. The first chapter focuses on alternative explanations of the apparent vast international differences in retail bank fees between countries on different levels of economic development. Apart from the usual form of asymmetric information between the bank and its borrowers (i.e. the assumption that the bank cannot observe the borrower's type), the additional assumption is that the borrowers themselves can have false perceptions about their quality. It is shown that the higher is the degree of the borrower's misperceptions about their skills the higher fees should be expected. In an alternative setup it is shown that comparable results can be received when banks possess imperfect testing technology (this assumption replaces the assumption about the borrower's false perceptions). Moreover, simulations using both setups also imply that under realistic conditions increasing wealth inequality in a country (measured by a Gini index) leads to higher fees. The second chapter focuses on the effects of inter-bank information sharing on the degree of competition in the banking industry. Information sharing is shown to be an effective...