Prof. Weitzner's paper wins research award

Congratulations to Gregory Weitzner, Assistant Professor in Finance, whose paper “Bank Loan Markups and Adverse Selection” has won the 2022 John W. Ryan Research Award.

Professor Gregory Weitzner’s paper with co-authors Mehdi Beyhaghi (Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond) and Cesare Fracassi (University of Texas at Austin) was chosen by the Community Banking Research Conference research committee as the winner of the "John W. Ryan Award for Most Significant Contribution to Community Banking Research“. The award was announced as part of the 10th Annual Community Banking Research Conference that was held September 28 – 29, 2022 in St. Louis. The award is named in honour of the late John Ryan, the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) President and CEO who helped found the conference. The conference brings together community bankers, academics, policymakers and bank regulators to discuss the latest research on community banking.

Here is a summary of the paper from the 2022 Conference Volume:

The authors analyze market power in local U.S. corporate loan markets. They find that, in contrast to typical theories of competition, loan markups are higher in regions in which more banks operate. They provide evidence that this result is driven by asymmetric information across banks, which becomes exacerbated as the number of banks increases. They also provide causal support for the role of adverse selection by showing that markups drop following a shock to large banks’ lending capacities, which reduces asymmetric information in local lending markets. Their findings suggest that adverse selection is an important driver of market power in local bank markets and has implications for antitrust policy.