ساختار بازار و شرایط رقابتی در سیستم بانکداری شورای همکاری خلیج فارس عرب

This paper investigates the market structure of Arab GCC banking industry during the years of 1993–2002 using the most frequently applied measures of concentration k-bank concentration ratio (CRk) and Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) and evaluates the monopoly power of banks over the ten years period using the ‘H-statistic’ by Panzar and Rosse. The results show that Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and UAE have moderately concentrated markets and are moving to less concentrated positions. The measures of concentration also show that Qatar, Bahrain and Oman are highly concentrated markets. The Panzar–Rosse H-statistics suggest that banks in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE operate under perfect competition; banks in Bahrain and Qatar operate under conditions of monopolistic competition; and we are unable to reject monopolistic competition for the banking market in Oman.

The Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC)1 economies share a number of common features. These economies are characterized by large oil producing sectors, dependency on oil exports, stable currencies and stable price levels. Similarities also extend to geography, longstanding cultural and political ties, a common language, high living standards and coordinated policies. These similarities by far outweigh any differences. The last 30 years have seen significant structural change in the GCC financial markets. In particular, policies of financial liberalization and financial restructuring were implemented with the goal of enhancing competitiveness in the banking sector. These policies beg the following questions: how large are the banking markets in these six countries? What is the structure of the banking market? Is the concentration in these markets increasing or decreasing? Studies of competitive conditions in the developed economies banking markets are commonplace, there have been relatively few studies conducted for the GCC economies2 and no empirical work of a specialist nature. This paper investigates the market structure of the GCC banking industry in the decade to 2002 with the aim of evaluating the monopoly power of the banks over this period. The paper aims to test the relationship between the market structure and the competitive conditions of the banks in these six economies using the most frequently applied measures of concentrations; namely the k-bank concentration ratio (CRk) and Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) to measure concentration, and the H-statistic of the Panzar–Rosse model to measure monopoly power. The rest of the paper has the following structure: Section 2, provides a background to the banking system in the GCC countries. Section 3, discusses measures of market structure and concentration. Section 4, presents the empirical result for the competitive conditions in these markets. The final section concludes.

This paper investigates the market structure of GCC banking industry during the periods of 1993–2002 and evaluates the monopoly power of banks. To our knowledge, no econometric analysis of competitive conditions of banking in the GCC economies has been conducted before. Our investigation suggests that there is some merit to examining the banks of the GCC countries as an aggregate. In total the GCC banking system can be thought of as operating under conditions of monopolistic competition. However, there is considerable variation within each economy. The results show that Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and UAE have unconcentrated markets and are moving to less concentrated positions. The P–R results suggest a mixed bag of competitive, monopolistic competition and monopoly within the GCC economies. The finding of perfect competition in the case of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (and possibly UAE if the value of H is taken as 1) coincide with the results of measures of concentration CRk and HHI as shown in Table 2. This could be explained by either the presence of the foreign banks in these countries as well as the preparation of these three countries for entering in WTO and the implications of ‘threat of entry’. The H-statistics is 0.70 and 0.63 for Bahrain and Qatar, indicating that the banks in these two countries earn their revenue under monopolistic competition. The H-statistics is −0.18 for Oman, indicating that the banks in Oman earned their revenue under monopoly conditions. Our findings suggest that except in the case of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the banking market in the rest of the GCC has yet some way to go in developing a competitive structure if it is to face the forces of global banking competition.