Bank competition in the EU: How has it evolved?

Economic integration on the EU banking markets is expected to favor competition. However no study has been performed in the 2000s showing this trend. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by measuring the evolution of bank competition in all EU countries during the 2000s with the Lerner index and the H-statistic. We do not observe a general improvement in bank competition in the EU. However, by applying β and σ convergence tests for panel data, we find that convergence in bank competition has taken place in EU countries.