The relationship between bank mergers and acquisitions and local commercial bank lending to agriculture: a county-level analysis
Rui Ju et al.
What the paper says
Purpose This study examines the relationship between mergers and acquisitions (M&As) among U.S. commercial banks and county-level agricultural lending. Design/methodology/approach We aggregate bank-level information sourced from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to county-level data and employ the Callaway and Sant’Anna (2021) estimator to explore how bank M&As are related to changes in commercial banks’ agricultural loan volume. Findings The estimates show that counties experiencing a commercial bank M&A subsequently exhibit statistically and economically significant declines in agricultural loan volumes held by commercial banks, with no evidence of differential pre-trends. These patterns are robust in subsamples focusing on rural counties and on community banks. Originality/value Research examining the localized effect of bank M&A activities remains limited. Our study bridges this research gap by incorporating the latest available data to conduct a detailed analysis at the local level.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.