Publication

Our working hypothesis is that where insufficient information-providing institutions exist, the preferred mode of entry will be an M&A, which allows with the acquisition of the target bank simultaneous access to the information the latter has on the local pool of borrowers. We provide a brief snapshot of the state of integration in the EU banking market. Next we outline the role of credit reporting in Europe and discuss the interrelation between credit reporting and bank competition. And then we discuss the latest theoretical and empirical advances on analysing the subject matter. Finally we present the dataset and the econometric analysis.