Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/85244 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
Economics Discussion Papers No. 2013-55
Publisher: 
Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), Kiel
Abstract: 
An evolutionary model of the bank size distribution is presented based on the exchange and expansion of deposit money. In agreement with empirical results the derived size distribution is lognormal with a power law tail. The key idea of the theory is to regard the creation of money as a slow process compared to exchange processes of deposit money. The exchange of deposits causes a preferential growth of banks with a fitness determined by the competitive advantage to attract permanent deposits. They generate the lognormal part of the size distribution. Sufficiently large banks, however, benefit from economies of scale leading to a Pareto tail. The model suggests that the liberalization of the banking system in the last decades is the origin of an increasing skewness of the bank size distribution.
Subjects: 
evolutionary economics
bank size
money
competition
Gibrat's law
JEL: 
G21
L11
E11
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
410.42 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.