The Panzar-Rosse test has been widely applied to assess competitive conduct, often in specifcations controlling for firm scale or using a price equation. We show that neither a price equation nor a scaled revenue function yields a valid measure for competitive conduct. Moreover, even an unscaled revenue function generally requires additional information about costs and market equilibrium. Our theoretical findings are confirmed by an empirical analysis of competition in banking, using a sample covering more than 110,000 bank-year observations on almost 18,000 banks in 67 countries during 1986-2004.

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Theoretical studies have noted that loan applicants rejected by one bank can apply at another bank, systematically worsening the pool of applicants faced by all banks. This paper presents the first empirical evidence of this effect and explores some additional ramifications, including the role of common filters, such as commercially available credit scoring models, in mitigating this adverse selection, implications for de novo banks, implications for banks' incentives to comply with fair lending laws, and macroeconomic effects.