Concentration and Competition in the Albanian Banking Sector

Abstract

Albania has a relatively new financial system, where banking system is the most developed financial service in our country, with a share of 94, 4 percent of the total financial services. This is a phenomenon of countries with emerging economies, which proves that there is greater reliance on the state economic development of the banking sector, by effecting from the households to the biggest investors and the government. As in any market, competition is important for the banking sector because, it affects the efficiency and the quality of services offered. Furthermore, competition in banking has also implications for other sectors of the economy. So, higher competition in the banking sector is found to be associated with a faster growth of other sectors of the economy that rely on external financing. The main goal of this paper is to understand the characteristics of competition in our banking system and study the relationship between the level of concentration and competition. We are going to measure the concentration by the “H” indices. The “H” (Herfindaflit) indices is a measure of the level of the concentration of the banking system of a country. A high level of the indices shows a high level of concentration and as a consequence a low level of competition. A low level of the indices shows a low level of concentration which is sign of a banking market with a high competition.