Cost efficiency and risk as determinants of market share in banking: Evidence from the old and new eu member and candidate countries

In this study we investigate how cost efficiency and risk affect market share in European banking industry. Our analysis is motivated by the well-known efficiency hypothesis and structure-conduct-performance theory. We hypothesize that improved efficiency and enhanced riskiness of a bank should be related to an increase in its market share. Therefore, in contrast to other studies, we include risk as a determinant of market share. In the study we use annual data for 36 European countries’ banks for the time span from 2007 to 2015. The results reveal that risk and efficiency are positively associated with market share of assets, loans and deposits. Additionally, we find that banks in transition countries were less successful in transposing their cost efficiency advantages into market share gains than banks in European developed countries. The empirical model is estimated by using the GMM method in order to account for dynamic nature of investigated components and to mitigate the endogeneity problem.