Assessing the asymmetric effects on branch rivalry of Spanish financial sector restructuring

Spanish financial institutions have been heavily affected by the banking crisis that began in 2008. Many of them, especially Spanish savings banks (or Cajas), had to merge with other institutions or had to be rescued. We address the question of up to what point the nature of competition in this sector has changed as a result of the crisis. Although institutions compete in many ways, we concentrate on their presence in the main street through bank branches open to the public (i.e., retail banking competition). Our measure of inter-firm rivalry is based on a geographical proximity measure that we calculate for the years 2008 (before the crisis) and 2012 (the last available data set). The technical approach is based on multidimensional unfolding, a methodology which allows us to graphically represent the asymmetric nature of such rivalry. These maps visualise the salient aspects of the system during the two dates analysed, and can be understood without a detailed technical knowledge.