The Size Distribution of US Banks and Credit Unions

John Goddard, Frank Hong Liu, Donal McKillop, John O. S. Wilson

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This study examines the firm size distribution of US banks and credit unions. A truncated lognormal distribution describes the size distribution, measured using assets data, of a large population of small, community-based commercial banks. The size distribution of a smaller but increasingly dominant cohort of large banks, which operate a high-volume low-cost retail banking model, exhibits power-law behaviour. There is a progressive increase in skewness over time, and Zipf’s Law is rejected as a descriptor of the size distribution in the upper tail. By contrast, the asset size distribution of the population of credit unions conforms closely to the lognormal distribution.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)139-156
Number of pages18
JournalInternational Journal of the Economics of Business
Volume21
Issue number1
Early online date6 Feb 2014
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014

Bibliographical note

The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of two anonymous referees on an earlier draft of this paper. The usual disclaimer applies.

Keywords

  • Firm Size distribution
  • Zipf's Law
  • Gibrat's Law
  • Banks
  • Credit Unions

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