The Size Distribution of US Banks and Credit Unions

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Electronic versions

Documents

DOI

  • J.A. Goddard
  • J. Goddard
  • H. Liu
  • D. McKillop
  • J.O. Wilson
This study examines the firm size distribution of US banks and credit unions. A truncated lognormal distribution describes the size distribution, measured using assets data, of a large population of small, community-based commercial banks. The size distribution of a smaller but increasingly dominant cohort of large banks, which operate a high-volume low-cost retail banking model, exhibits power-law behaviour. There is a progressive increase in skewness over time, and Zipf's Law is rejected as a descriptor of the size distribution in the upper tail. By contrast, the asset size distribution of the population of credit unions conforms closely to the lognormal distribution .
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)139-156
JournalInternational Journal of the Economics of Business
Volume21
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 6 Feb 2014

Total downloads

No data available
View graph of relations