شواهد جدید در بازده به مقیاس و ترکیب محصول در میان بانک های تجاری ایالات متحده

This paper presents new estimates of scale and product mix economies for U.S. commercial banks. We compare estimates derived from fitting a translog function to bank costs with estimates derived from nonparametric methods. We refine measures of scale and product mix economies introduced by Berger et al. (J. Monet. Econ. 20 (1987) 501) to accommodate nonparametric estimation, and estimate confidence intervals to assess the statistical significance of returns to scale. Broadly, we find evidence that potential economies have increased since 1985, with scale economies not exhausted until banks have $300–$500 million of assets. We generally fail to reject constant returns for larger banks.