The demise of community banks? Local economic shocks are not to blame [An article from: Journal of Banking and Finance]

This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Banking and Finance, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
The number of US community banks is falling rapidly. Is this reduction being driven in part by banks' desire to geographically diversify to reduce their vulnerability to local economic shocks? A comparison of the performance of banks in counties that suffered economic shocks in the 1990s with similar banks in counties that did not suffer economic shocks shows that banks withstand local economic shocks quite well. This result suggests that the geographic concentration risk that community banks must bear to focus on relationship lending is small and is not an important factor contributing to the decline of community banks.