TY  - JOUR
AU  - Garmaise,Mark J.
AU  - Moskowitz,Tobias J.
TI  - Bank Mergers and Crime: The Real and Social Effects of Credit Market Competition
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11006
PY  - 2004
Y2  - December 2004
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11006
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11006.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Mark Garmaise
Anderson Graduate School of Management
C511 Entrepreneurs Hall
110 Westwood Plaza
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1481
Tel: 310/794-4118
E-Mail: mark.garmaise@anderson.ucla.edu

Tobias J. Moskowitz
Booth School of Business
University of Chicago
5807 S. Woodlawn Ave.
Chicago, IL  60637
Tel: 773/834-2757
Fax: 773/702-0458
E-Mail: tobias.moskowitz@chicagobooth.edu
AB  - Using a unique sample of commercial loans and mergers between large banks, we provide microlevel (within-county) evidence linking credit conditions to economic development and find a spillover effect on crime. Neighborhoods that experienced more bank mergers are subjected to higher interest rates, diminished local construction, lower prices, an influx of poorer households, and higher property crime in subsequent years. The elasticity of property crime with respect to merger-induced banking concentration is 0.18. We show that these results are not likely due to reverse causation, and confirm the central findings using state branching deregulation to instrument for bank competition.
ER  -