IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgfe/2008-32.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Consumer switching costs and firm pricing: evidence from bank pricing of deposit accounts

Author

Listed:
  • Timothy H. Hannan

Abstract

This paper employs extensive information on bank deposit rates and county migration patterns to test for pricing relationships implied by the existence of switching costs. While these relationships are derived formally, the intuition for them can be readily stated. Because some areas experience more in-migration than others, banks, in addressing the trade-off between attracting new customers and exploiting old ones, offer higher deposit rates in areas (and at times) experiencing more in-migration. Further, because out-migration implies that on average a locked-in customer will not be with the bank as many periods, greater out-migration should change the bank?s assessment of this trade-off such that the bank will offer lower deposit rates in areas (and during periods) exhibiting greater out-migration, all else equal. Also, because this effect of out-migration logically depends on the existence and extent of in-migration, an interaction effect is implied. Evidence strongly supporting these implied relationships is reported. Other tests of the implications of switching costs in the banking industry are also conducted.

Suggested Citation

  • Timothy H. Hannan, 2008. "Consumer switching costs and firm pricing: evidence from bank pricing of deposit accounts," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2008-32, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2008-32
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2008/200832/200832abs.html
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2008/200832/200832pap.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Elizabeth Kiser, 2002. "Predicting Household Switching Behavior and Switching Costs at Depository Institutions," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 20(4), pages 349-365, June.
    2. Paul Klemperer, 1995. "Competition when Consumers have Switching Costs: An Overview with Applications to Industrial Organization, Macroeconomics, and International Trade," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 62(4), pages 515-539.
    3. Berger, Allen N & Hannan, Timothy H, 1989. "The Price-Concentration Relationship in Banking," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 71(2), pages 291-299, May.
    4. Farrell, Joseph & Klemperer, Paul, 2007. "Coordination and Lock-In: Competition with Switching Costs and Network Effects," Handbook of Industrial Organization, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Robert M. Adams, 2017. "Bank Fees, Aftermarkets, and Consumer Behavior," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2017-054, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    2. Richard J. Sullivan, 2013. "The impact of debit card regulation on checking account fees," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue Q IV, pages 59-93.
    3. Jorge Ale, 2013. "Switching Costs and Introductory Pricing in the Wireless Service Industry," Working Papers 13-17, NET Institute.
    4. Carlos D. Ramirez, 2021. "The real effects of liquidity: Puerto Rico as a natural experiment," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(3), pages 1172-1191, July.
    5. Brown, Martin & Guin, Benjamin & Morkoetter, Stefan, 2013. "Deposit Withdrawals from Distressed Commercial Banks: The Importance of Switching Costs," Working Papers on Finance 1319, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance, revised Dec 2017.
    6. Vladimir Yankov, 2014. "In Search of a Risk-free Asset," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2014-108, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    7. Zhao, Tianshu & Matthews, Kent & Murinde, Victor, 2013. "Cross-selling, switching costs and imperfect competition in British banks," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 5452-5462.
    8. Shy, Oz & Stenbacka, Rune & Yankov, Vladimir, 2016. "Limited deposit insurance coverage and bank competition," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 95-108.
    9. Brown, Martin & Guin, Benjamin & Morkoetter, Stefan, 2020. "Deposit withdrawals from distressed banks: Client relationships matter," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).
    10. Brunetti, M. & Ciciretti, R. & Djordjevic, Lj., 2020. "Till mortgage do us part: Mortgage switching costs and household's bank switching," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    11. repec:zbw:bofitp:2014_009 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Carbo-Valverde, Santiago & Hannan, Timothy H. & Rodriguez-Fernandez, Francisco, 2011. "Exploiting old customers and attracting new ones: The case of bank deposit pricing," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(7), pages 903-915.
    13. Stenbacka, Rune & Takalo, Tuomas, 2019. "Switching costs and financial stability," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 14-24.
    14. Chun‐Yu Ho, 2015. "Switching Cost And Deposit Demand In China," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 56(3), pages 723-749, August.
    15. Christian Stettler, 2020. "Loss Averse Depositors and Monetary Policy around Zero," KOF Working papers 20-476, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    16. Anderson, Robert D.J. & Ashton, John K. & Hudson, Robert S., 2014. "The influence of product age on pricing decisions: An examination of bank deposit interest rate setting," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 216-230.
    17. Guin, Benjamin & Brown, Martin & Morkötter, Stefan, 2015. "Deposit Withdrawals from Distressed Commercial Banks," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 113081, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    18. Deuflhard, Florian, 2018. "Quantifying inertia in retail deposit markets," SAFE Working Paper Series 223, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    19. Chun‐Yu Ho, 2015. "Switching Cost And Deposit Demand In China," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 56(3), pages 723-749, August.
    20. Polo, Alberto, 2021. "Imperfect pass-through to deposit rates and monetary policy transmission," Bank of England working papers 933, Bank of England.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Elizabeth Kiser, 2002. "Predicting Household Switching Behavior and Switching Costs at Depository Institutions," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 20(4), pages 349-365, June.
    2. Chun‐Yu Ho, 2015. "Switching Cost And Deposit Demand In China," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 56(3), pages 723-749, August.
    3. Erik Heitfield & Robin A. Prager, 2002. "The geographic scope of retail deposit markets," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2002-49, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    4. Hannan, Timothy H., 2007. "ATM surcharge bans and bank market structure: The case of Iowa and its neighbors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 1061-1082, April.
    5. Erik Heitfield & Robin Prager, 2004. "The Geographic Scope of Retail Deposit Markets," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 25(1), pages 37-55, February.
    6. Elizabeth K. Kiser, 2002. "Household switching behavior at depository institutions: evidence from survey data," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2002-44, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    7. Zhao, Tianshu & Matthews, Kent & Murinde, Victor, 2013. "Cross-selling, switching costs and imperfect competition in British banks," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 5452-5462.
    8. Rosen, Richard J., 2007. "Banking market conditions and deposit interest rates," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(12), pages 3862-3884, December.
    9. Paul Edelstein & Donald P. Morgan, 2006. "Local or state? Evidence on bank market size using branch prices," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 12(May), pages 15-25.
    10. Michal Grajek, 2003. "Estimating Network Effects and Compatibility in Mobile Telecommunications," CIG Working Papers SP II 2003-26, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Research Unit: Competition and Innovation (CIG).
    11. Hannan, Timothy H. & Prager, Robin A., 2006. "Multimarket bank pricing: An empirical investigation of deposit interest rates," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 256-272.
    12. Timothy Hannan, 2003. "Changes in Non-Local Lending to Small Business," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 24(1), pages 31-46, August.
    13. Brunetti, M. & Ciciretti, R. & Djordjevic, Lj., 2020. "Till mortgage do us part: Mortgage switching costs and household's bank switching," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    14. Yoonhee Tina Chang & Catherine Waddams Price, 2008. "Gain or Pain: Does Consumer Activity Reflect Utility Maximisation?," Working Papers 08-15, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia.
    15. Steven J. Pilloff, 2004. "Bank merger activity in the United States, 1994-2003," Staff Studies 176, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    16. Céline Gondat-Larralde & Erlend Nier, 2006. "Switching costs in the market for personal current accounts: some evidence for the United Kingdom," Bank of England working papers 292, Bank of England.
    17. Pei-Yu (Sharon) Chen & Lorin M. Hitt, 2002. "Measuring Switching Costs and the Determinants of Customer Retention in Internet-Enabled Businesses: A Study of the Online Brokerage Industry," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 13(3), pages 255-274, September.
    18. V. Brian Viard, 2007. "Do switching costs make markets more or less competitive? The case of 800-number portability," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(1), pages 146-163, March.
    19. Fredrik Carlsson & Åsa Lofgren, 2006. "Airline choice, switching costs and frequent flyer programmes," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(13), pages 1469-1475.
    20. Bouckaert, Jan & Degryse, Hans & Provoost, Thomas, 2010. "Enhancing market power by reducing switching costs," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 109(2), pages 131-133, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bank deposits; Interest rates;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2008-32. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.