The Impact of Macroeconomic and Institutional Variables on Banking Industry Structure

The major function of a financial market in the literature on economy represents a way to conduct and dedicate capital. Banks in developing countries have a main role in this way; we can find some variables effective on market structure to advocate capital more efficiently. This paper studies the importance and impact of macroeconomic variables on banking system structure within 15 out of 20 years of Iran's perspective plan. The study has used a fixed-effect panel data method during 2002 to 2009. The results show that the logarithmic form of per capita GDP is the most important variable in market power description as a proxy for institution development. Other institutional variables such as economic freedom index, governance index and financial freedom index have the second importance after the bank special variables (loans to asset ratio and total asset logarithmic form). Inflation rate has a little significant effect on the structure of banking industry, and GDP growth rate has no significant effect on it.