Changes in the structure of bank and non-bank competition in the United States

From the end of World War II until the beginning of the decade of the sixties, non-bank financial institutions in the United States experienced a far greater growth rate than did commercial banks. By contrast, in the 1960s the growth rate of commercial banks sharply accelerated, while that of the nonbanks held rather stable. In the present work, t is argued that more aggressive competition by banks in the sixties necessarily reflected a revolutionary willingness to take the risk that higher and costlier time deposit rates would cut into the banks’ own monopoly in providing demand deposits. The major theme of the paper is that the banks’ willingness to compete is directly quantifiable by reviewing their willingness to accept narrower profit margins. These narrower margins resulted from a faster rise in TD rates than in rates of return on bank credit; it was the banks’ acceptance of the new set of cost/return functions that helped them to bid funds away from non-banks. Finally, a rise in leveraging of capital accounts and faster asset growth by banks allowed them to maintain profit rates, while, under that same competitive pressure, nonbank profit rates receded.