Bank competition and outreach: Evidence from Turkey

In light of the importance of banking sector outreach and given concerns that competition may adversely affect it, this study explores the empirical linkage between banking structure and outreach in Turkey for the period 1988-2010. Bank-, province-, and bank-province-level estimation results indicate that competition is in general conducive to the outreach of banks. We do not find evidence for collusive behavior among banks when they have multimarket contact. At the province level, the presence of foreign-owned banks is associated with higher outreach, while at the bank-province level, we observe that outreach of domestic banks exceeds that of foreign banks. Together, these results suggest that there are procompetitive spillover effects from foreign banks to their domestic counterparts.