رقابت بانک و سیاست های پولی بانک مرکزی اروپا

In a model of oligopolistic competition in the banking sector, we analyse how the monetary policy rule chosen by the Central Bank can influence the incentive of banks to set high interest rates on loans over the business cycle. We exploit the basic model to investigate the potential impact of EMU implementation on collusion among banks. In particular, we consider the possible effects of the European Central Bank's policy criteria with regard to the cost of credit in national markets.

The campaign on the benefits of the EMU emphasises the increase in consumer's surplus brought about by smaller transaction costs and, in general, increased competition in all markets. Also the banking sector will have to undergo formidable changes. Although the implications of the EMU on the banking system have been discussed exclusively at the microeconomic level (see e.g., Dornbusch et al., 1998), the likely consequences of the changed macroeconomic scenario on increasingly integrated financial markets have still to be investigated. The conduct of monetary policy is going to change under the EMU, even though the ultimate goal of the European Central Bank (ECB) remains price stability (European Central Bank, 1998). Sharing the same objective of the Bundesbank is not indeed a guarantee of unchanged policy for a number of reasons. Since voting participants outnumber the ECB's executive board (Kenen, 1995), monetary policy will no longer be aimed at achieving German domestic objectives (as in the EMS era), but will be geared to pursue the interests of all countries in the Union. In this paper, we argue that the novelties brought about by the EMU in policy-making criteria may influence competition in the credit markets of member countries. We model inter-bank competition in national credit markets by using the oligopoly model developed by Rotemberg and Saloner (1986) (see also Bagwell and Staiger, 1997) and show that “implicit collusion” can arise without any overt cooperation among banks.1 Thus, even when loans are priced following non-cooperative Nash strategies, lending rates may be set above their competitive level. The pricing behaviour of banks depends on the (current) gains and on the (future) losses of undercutting. When an oligopolistic bank undercuts on its loan rate, it manages to steal the current market share of its competitors. Then, banks will have an incentive to compete more aggressively when the loan market is buoyant. However, undercutting entails a cost, since the rival banks will punish aggressive behaviour by setting competitive loan rates in the future (trigger-strategy). A similar model has been used by Dutta and Madhavan (1997) to examine implicit collusion among securities dealers. Although we abstract from many aspects that are frequently considered in modern banking theory (such as asymmetric information in the lender–borrower relation: see Freixas and Rochet, 1997), the adoption of the Rotemberg–Saloner framework presents several advantages. First, it can encompass different types of competition, from perfect competition to monopoly pricing.2 Second, it is well suited to capture the effects of entry on pricing policies. This has some relevance to our purposes, since the EMU is supposed to increase market integration and competition. Third, the Rotemberg–Saloner model provides an explicit analysis of pricing-behaviour over the business cycle. This feature is particularly important here, since monetary policy may well respond to cyclical fluctuations. The model presented in this paper makes a general point. We show that monetary policy affects banks' incentives to collude in the credit market through its influence on the cost of raising funds (interest rates paid on deposits, etc.). For example, if the Central Bank raises market rates during booms, banks will have to bear higher costs on the funds they collect. Since the higher cost of funding reduces the gains that can be obtained by pricing loans more aggressively, a countercyclical monetary policy may favour implicit collusion among banks. Thus, the selection of the monetary policy rule tends to condition the competitive environment of the banking industry. This simple principle has interesting implications for the transition process to the EMU. Not only increasing integration will modify the market structure of credit markets in member-countries, but also the shift from national Central Banks to the ECB may have specific effects on banks' behaviour. This aspect may be particularly relevant in the comparison of Germany, where the Bundesbank enjoyed some degree of freedom in monetary policy decisions, with other EMS members, whose monetary policies had to adapt in order to keep exchange-rate stability. The paper is organised as follows. Section 2 develops the implicit-collusion model of the banking sector and analyses the effects of entry and market-niches on banks' pricing policy. Section 3 shows how monetary policy rules can affect competition in the credit market and makes some conjectures on the possible impact of ECB's policy criteria. Section 4 briefly concludes the paper.

It is commonly believed that the introduction of the Euro will force an increase in competition in the banking sector. Domestic banks will lose the shelter of the national currency from international competition. The possible macroeconomic consequences have been neglected, probably under the presumption that the passage from the Bundesbank to the ECB would not affect the market structure. In this paper, we have shown that the type of monetary policy rule chosen by the monetary authorities tends to affect the degree of competitiveness in oligopolistic banking sectors. For this reason, monetary policy criteria that are designed to achieve some desired macroeconomic target may results in a “softer”, or “tougher”, credit-market competition. This simple idea may have relevant implication for the EMU. The shift from the EMS to the EMU is likely to have relevant- and varied-effects on the German and other European credit markets. There is a trade-off between conducting monetary policy and banking competition. The loss in the monetary leadership for Germany is “compensated” by increased competition of the German banking sector. A prediction of our model thus is that German banks might experience a comparatively larger increase in efficiency than their European counterparts.