Quantifying inertia in retail deposit markets

  • This paper investigates inertia within and across banks in retail deposit markets using detailed panel data on consumer choices and account characteristics. In a structural choice model, I find that costs of inertia are around one third higher for switching accounts across compared to switching within banks. Observable proxies of bank-level switching costs (number and type of additional financial products) explain most of this cost premium, while online banking usage reduces inertia. Consistent with theory, I provide evidence that banks incorporate inertia in their pricing as older accounts pay lower rates than comparable newer accounts. Counterfactual policies reducing inertia shift market share to more competitive smaller banks, but only eliminating inertia within banks already results in high potential gains in consumer surplus. This suggests that facilitating bank switching alone might be insufficient to improve consumer choices.

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Metadaten
Author:Florian Deuflhard
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-472355
URL:https://ssrn.com/abstract=3237355
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3237355
Parent Title (English):SAFE working paper series ; No. 223
Series (Serial Number):SAFE working paper (223)
Publisher:SAFE
Place of publication:Frankfurt am Main
Document Type:Working Paper
Language:English
Year of Completion:2018
Year of first Publication:2018
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2018/09/05
Issue:Draft: March 2018
Page Number:57
HeBIS-PPN:436685914
Institutes:Wirtschaftswissenschaften / Wirtschaftswissenschaften
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / House of Finance (HoF)
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Center for Financial Studies (CFS)
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe (SAFE)
Dewey Decimal Classification:3 Sozialwissenschaften / 33 Wirtschaft / 330 Wirtschaft
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoDeutsches Urheberrecht