Dynamics of Growth and Profitability in Banking

Dynamic panel and cross-sectional regressions are used to estimate growth and profit equations for a sample of commercial, savings, and co-operative banks from five major European Union countries during the mid-1990s. Methodologically, the paper unifies the growth and profit strands in the previous empirical literature. The growth regressions reveal little or no evidence of mean-reversion in bank sizes. Profit is an important prerequisite for future growth. Banks that maintain a high capital-assets ratio tend to grow slowly, and growth is linked to macroeconomic conditions. Otherwise, there are few systematic influences on bank growth. The persistence of profit appears higher for savings and co-operative banks…