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We distinguish between two forms of local banks that build and maintain legitimacy in different ways: branches and unit banks. Branches gain legitimacy through the parent organization. Unit banks gain legitimacy through the personal reputation and social connections of the founders. Given the different ways in which legitimacy is built by these organizational forms, we think that the rural or urban nature of the community is likely to affect the founding rates of these two forms differently. Rural communities, in which personal and family relationships play an important role in both social and economic life, provide advantages to well-connected founders of unit banks. In these communities social networks serve as a demand buffer for unit banks, making the founding rate of this organizational form less sensitive to fluctuations in the demand for banking services in rural versus urban communities. In contrast, the founding rate of branches may not be greatly affected by the community context because branches gain legitimacy through a sponsoring organization whose legitimating characteristics are not local. Empirical analyses of foundings of local banks between 1976 and 1988 support these predictions. Supplemental empirical analyses also show no evidence of such buffering effect for unit retail establishments, which are expected to be less central in the social networks of rural communities than unit banks. Our results suggest that community organization channels resources to some kinds of organizations at the expense of others and that organizational research in general and organizational ecology in particular will benefit by paying more attention to community context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine loan commitments and lending patterns of community banks. The authors also test for shifts in these relationships in the period unwinding the subprime crisis.

Standard panel fixed-effect models as well as hierarchical (mixed) regression models are estimated given that banks operating in a specific geographic market may vary systematically with differences in firm-level characteristics. Hierarchical (mixed) regression models can control for within-counties and within-banks similarities. The authors also employ pooled estimations with clustered standard errors at the bank level as robustness check.

The empirical results show that the use of loan commitments is generally associated with moderate increase in profitability and higher insolvency risk. However, during the recent financial crisis, the use of loan commitments becomes safer. The use of loan commitments is more risky for community banks that concentrate more on loans that focus on real estate, while it is safer for community banks with higher equity. In regards to the performance of community banks’ balance sheet loan activities, a more concentrated loan portfolio results in lower return and higher insolvency risks. High loan growth generates higher return and higher risks.

Prior to the 2008 credit meltdown, community banks significantly increased their issuance of off-balance sheet loan commitments. While the ratio of loan commitments to total loans has come down in recent years it continues to exceed the levels reached in the 1990s. This evolution has, however resulted in little research regarding its implications on community bank profitability and risk.

The purpose of this paper is to assess product and service arrays of community banks within competitive markets that are impacted by varying sized financial institutions. A cost efficiency model is used to understand the relationship of product offerings and business cycle response upon bank performance.

A cost efficiency model is used to understand the relationship of product offerings and business cycle response upon bank performance. Markets comprised of alternate size and type of financial institutions are compared.

Greater values of X_EFF _i when institutions compete are observed in this analysis. Cost efficiency is lowest when community banks are the only institution in the market, and second lowest when credit unions are the only competing institutions. Call report data are analyzed from 1994 to 2013. The number of big banks increases community bank efficiency and efficiency of large banks. Also, the number of community banks does affect big bank cost efficiency. The magnitude of the effect pertaining to the number of community banks upon big bank efficiency is much smaller than that of the number of big banks on community bank efficiency.

This study considers cost efficiency and profitability as measures of institution on the performance of a competing institutional type. The modeling approach uses cost efficiency as a method of observing the performance of financial institutions and an explanation of how firms persist, grow, and respond to changes in technology or regulation. The effects of the presence of each type of financial institution on the performance of another type are compared. Situations in which any number of one or more institutional types is present in a market are considered for analysis purposes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether community banks have gained market share at the expense of larger, regional banks in small metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). The authors also seek to examine market share gains of community banks relative to each other.

The empirical research is conducted using deposit and market share data for community and regional banks between 2001 and 2008. The authors employ regression analysis.

It is found that community banks have gained market share. When regional banks are excluded and the market share gains of community banks relative to each other examined it is found that community banks with lower market shares gain relative to banks with a larger initial share of the deposit market.

Research is conducted using eight metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. Thus, conclusions drawn are based on analysis conducted in one region of the United States.

The paper's findings are in contrast to traditional thinking about size and market share and suggest that community bank managers should focus on each other as well as regional and mega‐bank competitors.

The paper uses market share as a proxy for bank size as a means of explaining the competitive landscape that exists within community banking.

Community banks continue to offer important financial services including agricultural and small-business lending as well as residential mortgage origination. Because community banks’ share of available source funds may be threatened in rural markets due to competing larger banks seeking less expensive core deposits, this study examines whether large-bank competition, market share of deposits and changing market share impact the profitability of rural, small community banks.

Using a Heckman-type selection model to control for sample selection bias, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis with time and bank fixed effects is conducted to study the drivers of profitability in small, community banks that operate exclusively in rural markets. Profit drivers for rural, small community banks of particular interest in the study are larger-bank competition, market share of deposits and year-to-year change in market share of deposits.

The research indicates that rural, small community bank profitability decreases in concurrent market share of deposits and may increase in changing market share but that the presence of a larger competitor decreases the profitability of small community banks in rural markets as larger banks compete for deposits in these markets. The paper also finds that increased Internet access in rural markets accompanies lower performance for small community banks, indicating that online banking services may threaten rural, small community banks.

This paper offers new findings to the literature on the performance effects of large competitors in rural banking markets. The results suggest implications for managers of rural, small community banks and offer additional knowledge about profit drivers of rural, small community banks of which regulators should be cognizant.

Community banks were affected distinctly by changes in banking regulation in the 1990s when compared with large commercial banks. These banks offer non-traditional finance items, presumably to compete with these financial institutions. This study aims to examine the importance of accounting for off-balance sheet (OBS) items when estimating the financial performance of community banks.

This study applies a two-stage analysis pathway that initially calculates X-efficiency scores as part of the overall cost structure and then deploys data envelopment analysis bootstrapping method for a second-stage ordinary least square model.

Study findings indicate that failure to include OBS items in the X-efficiency calculation for community banks understates the efficiency performance of these banks. Furthermore, results indicate that factors internal and external to the community bank affect X-efficiency. Increases in OBS items are associated with growth in assets and growth in net non-interest income. Therefore, OBS items become an attractive alternative source of income and a mechanism for expanding output with the same volume of inputs. In addition, OBS items allow the largest community banks to deleverage their balance sheet, whereas the smallest community banks still emphasize on traditional lending products and benefit from existing equity. Also, larger banks may be using OBS items as a mechanism to isolate their performance from macroeconomic fluctuations.

Research limitations include a reduced number of community banks as consolidation accelerates partly because of compliance concerns.

The approach used supports a series of community bank managerial approaches that may be adopted by management.

The results of this study show several reasons why community banks may have managerial incentives to include OBS items. As observed by Gilbert et al. (2013), community banks are adjusting their product line so as to operate efficiently. Community banks must provide a product line which provides margin and meets customer needs at a profit to the firm. OBS items allow existing staff to provide funds without additional equity requirements from the balance sheets. The increase in OBS activities may signal the perception that the associated interest income is less risky and less costly than other alternatives, including adopting technologies to diversify traditional loan product offerings. As community banks tend to have lower default rates than their larger counterparts, the most likely explanation is that the OBS interest risk is more attractive than compliance or development of mechanisms to offer a broader suite of traditional loan products.

With rising industry consolidation in the banking industry, it is unclear whether community banks may find more or less market opportunities. This paper aims to investigate how industry consolidation may affect community banks’ market share outcomes. The second goal of this paper is to establish the ways in which community banks may successfully manage market share growth goals that may be antithetical to the principles of being a local brand.

The empirical analysis is on the US banking industry, spanning the years from 1994 to 2018. This comprehensive panel data set includes county-year level granularity for more than 15,000 banks. Panel regression models that include bank-, county- and year-specific fixed effects are deployed.

It is found that local brands, operationalized as community banks in this study’s empirical context, are having the most success in consolidated market contexts. When pursuing market share growth, a distribution strategy to saturate a local market is found to be advantageous while expanding across geographies is less advisable for community banks.

The findings shed empirical light on the challenges and opportunities for community banks, thereby contributing to the banking industry literature and to an emerging stream of research on local brand management. By demonstrating the means of which growth can be successfully managed by local brands, the important and largely unanswered question of how a local brand can effectively grow is addressed.

The survivorship of firms under extreme weather poses an essential question about the local economy's health. Over 90% of agricultural banks are categorized as community banks, which are important financial institutions promoting local growth. While previous studies suggest that climate change and weather shocks adversely impact community banks' resiliency, studies on whether these institutions engage in risk-reducing management strategies have been limited. In this study, the authors examine strategic choices of local community banks when facing flood events which include (1) safety net increase, (2) portfolio diversification, and (3) branch opening. These strategic choices are the coping mechanisms banks can take to survive while affecting the local competitive lending market.

The authors use panel-fixed effect regressions based on the storm data from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s National Weather Service (NWS) and the call reports from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The authors focus on community banks' account variable characteristics and the number of offices to examine whether community banks take an active role in managing flood risk.

Results suggest that community banks do employ the selected strategic choices to a certain degree, as it is found that there is an increase in the core capital that absorbs shocks and portfolio diversification. However, the magnitudes of these activities are rather small and not large enough to fully mitigate the climate risk. Also, the authors do not find any evidence of branch expansion associated with local floods.

This study contributes to the literature by examining different strategic choices of community banks in the face of natural uncertainty. Even though concerns of climate risk have been raised in the regulatory setting, a lack of guidance or assessment tools could contribute to the passive action of these community banks, even though climate risks can have a significant economic impact. Thus, the evidence documented from this study calls for further guidelines and the importance of highlighting climate risks on community banks so that they can actively engage in risk-reducing strategies.

In recent years, Japanese co‐operative banks have been attracting new interest among academics and the population generally as institutions through which deprived communities can be revitalized. They have been shown to be capable of promoting both social co‐operation and economical development through the financing of new social enterprises by investments coming mainly from local residents and existing social organizations. This paper aims to address the central questions of what Japanese co‐operative banks can do to encourage co‐operation among local residents and social enterprises so that they willingly invest their money in the development of their local community.

In order to explore these questions, two Japanese co‐operative banks are compared by means of a questionnaire survey and semi‐structured interviews with their investors and boards of directors. The main reason for focusing this investigation on these two banks was that despite the similarity of their political, economical and demographical backgrounds, one of them showed a steady growth in local investment while the other failed to produce a similar level of local engagement.

The findings of the paper clearly demonstrated that when a co‐operative bank acts as “community organizer”, undertaking tasks which are outside its usual sphere of activities as financier, and its board includes members of the social enterprise sector, its positive impact on community development is more effective. However, it also became clear that a vital feature of this kind of endeavour is the utilization of expertise derived from members of the local community.

The paper makes an important contribution to the understanding of co‐operative banks as community organizers. Its originality lies primarily in the fact that it was the first time that this type of research has been conducted on Japanese co‐operative banks.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the differences between community and non-community banks (CBs and Non-CBs) in the US. As the former have been declining in numbers, previous literature shows inherent differences between the business models of CBs and Non-CBs. This study attempts to gauge whether the impact of the reserve elimination during the Covid pandemic affected all banks similarly or whether community banks showed a differentiated response.

On March 26, 2020, the Federal Reserve, at the onset of the Covid pandemic, altered the depository institution reserve requirement for the first time since 1992. This significant change in policy led to the reserve requirement reduction from 10% to 0%. This study examines the impact of the 2020 reserve elimination on all community banks and non-community banks in the US and finds that although the level of cash to assets increased at both types of depository institutions post reserve elimination, the impact on liquidity-focused ratios was more pervasive at community banks in the first quarter post the regulatory shift. Among community banks, the largest depository institutions experienced the biggest balance sheet adjustments in the June 2020 quarter that followed the change in Federal Reserve’s policy. Further, the study finds that over two-quarters post reserve elimination, the non-community banks demonstrate a greater increase in balance sheet liquidity. Past literature shows that community banks tend to carry more liquidity than non-community banks and small community banks tend to carry more liquidity than their larger counterparts. These previous findings may provide some explanation for the different speed documented in this study at which various banks have reacted to the reserve elimination in 2020.

This research finds that community banks had a quicker response to the change in the reserve elimination, showing quick increases across liquidity ratios. The larger non-community banks tended to play catch up, increasing their liquidity in the subsequent quarter. The study also shows that the changes in liquidity were initially driven by the segment of large community banks.

This study looks at how the reserve elimination enacted by the Federal Reserve in March 2020 in response to the Covid pandemic affected community versus non-community banks. Currently, as far as the authors know, there are no other published papers that look at this issue.