... Most of this literature on the impact of bank mergers focuses on testing the validity of two hypotheses, the “efficiency hypothesis” and its opposite, the “structure-conduct-performance hypothesis”. ... ],,(1+∈iixxx = 0, otherwise, (12) and where x is the value of the explanatory variable (the time distance to the merger, in our case). The values ix denote the “knots” of the spline, and the coefficients, ... the change of market share realized in the year of the merger. That is, we approximate the change of market share caused by the merger as the difference between the bank’s market share in the...