© 1998 Oxford University Press
research-article |
Deregulation and Competition in the Financial Industry
aJesus College Oxford OX1 3DW, and Said Business School, University of Oxford
bInstitute of Health Sciences, University of Oxford Oxford, UK
cDepartment of Sociology, Stanford University CA 94305, USA
Abstract
Deregulation has stimulated much economic and political interest. This paper develops a framework for understanding the effects of deregulation from an ecological perspective and reports empirical studies of financial institutions (banks, thrifts and mutual funds) at two levels of analysis: the system and the population. These both show that deregulation bad a dramatic impact on the level of competitive intensity within the financial industry. The main contributions of this paper are the application of a general sociological theory of organizational dynamics to understanding deregulation and the development of a general approach to modelling which could lead to new ways to evaluate the organizational consequences of major environmental changes.