Speaker: Associate Professor Liu Yan (School of Business, Sun Yat‑sen University)
Moderator: Assistant Professor Xiong Zeyuan (China Institute of Economics, Liaoning University)
Guest: Associate Professor He Chao (China Institute of Economics, Liaoning University)
Time: 9:30–11:00 (Beijing Time), Friday, October 23, 2026
Venue: Room 547, Economics Division Building, Puhe Campus, Liaoning University
Language: Chinese / English
Abstract
The prefecture‑level banking market structure reflects local bank competition and bears great significance for economic development and financial stability. Due to the lack of systematic bank‑size data at the prefecture level, existing estimates of the micro market structure of China’s banking industry have long relied solely on branch counts. This paper integrates comprehensive bank‑level size databases, branch records including exited institutions, and aggregate banking size data across 367 prefecture‑level administrative regions in China. By solving a quadratic optimization problem with roughly 100,000 variables and constraints, it estimates the assets, liabilities, loans and deposits of individual banks in each prefecture‑level administrative region. The estimation accuracy is validated against real bank‑prefecture size data from provincial financial yearbooks. On this basis, the paper constructs multi‑dimensional market structure indicators for China’s banking sector at the prefecture level.
This study finds that market concentration in China’s banking industry declined markedly from 2004 to 2016 and has remained stable since 2016. Further empirical analyses at the bank and regional levels yield two key findings: (1) Banking competition squeezes bank profit margins and weakens risk buffers, yet it does not necessarily raise bank failure risk; (2) Banking market structure significantly affects the transmission efficiency of monetary policy on the liability side, with distinct regional heterogeneity. This paper contributes a new measurement method and dataset foundation for research on China’s banking market structure, and provides empirical evidence for understanding bank competition, financial stability and monetary policy transmission.
Speaker Profile
Associate Professor, School of Business (School of Entrepreneurship), Sun Yat‑sen University; Young Scholar of the Chang Jiang Scholars Program of the Ministry of Education. He holds a PhD in Economics from Stony Brook University, State University of New York, and dual bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics and Economics from Peking University. His research focuses on macroeconomics, financial intermediation theory, monetary and banking theory, and corporate finance. He serves as Guest Editor of theEuropean Economic Review. He leads the China Banking Database (CBD) project and has presided over three National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) projects. As a core team member or subproject leader, he has participated in one key R&D program of the Ministry of Science and Technology, three major projects of the National Social Science Fund of China, and two key NSFC projects.
His research outputs have appeared inPeople’s Daily (Internal Reference),Economic Research Journal,Management World,Review of Economic Studies,Journal of International Economics, and other domestic and international journals. He has won four provincial social science awards, the inaugural PwC 3535 Best Paper Award (2020), and two Best Paper Awards from the China Financial Annual Conference.
