Competition in the Brazilian banking sector: individualized banks versus banking conglomerates

Abstract

The concept of economic group is central in competition analysis. However, most studies on banking competition in Brazil uses the Central Bank 4010 Report, which provides information to banks identified by their tax-identification number (CNPJ), disregarding therefore possible coordination between companies belonging to the same financial conglomerate. This paper seeks to empirically investigate whether this disregard of the economic group produces bias in the estimates of competition measures in the Brazilian banking market. In this article we estimate usual parameters of banking competition, suggested by Bresnahan and Lau (1982), Panzar and Rosse (1987) and Boone (2008) using financial-accounting data of individual banks (Report 4010) and banking conglomerates (Report 4040). Our estimates show that, since 2004, there is evidence of a significant difference between the two databases, which reveals that studies that disregard coordination between companies of the same group are subject to overestimation bias of banking competition intensity.