1st Annual Conference on Bank Structure and Competition

Since the early 1960s, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s Conference on Bank Structure and Competition has served as a forum for academics, regulators and industry participants to debate current issues affecting the financial services industry. Each year the purpose of the conference is to continue that tradition. This retrospective on the history and evolution of the conference reviews the past four decades of conferences.
The primary motivating factor for the conference was the passage of the 1960 Bank Merger Act and the U.S. versus Philadelphia National Bank Supreme Court decision. Suddenly, bank regulatory agencies were required to consider competitive factors in addition to banking factors when evaluating bank merger applications. Each of the Federal Reserve Banks was encouraged to survey the existing literature on bank structure and develop its own research agendas on these issues.
Corwin D. Edwards, Professor, Graduate School of Business
Reuben Kessel, Professor, Department of Economics
Sam Peltzman, Graduate Student, Department of Economics
Dr. Irving Schweiger, School of Business
William Grampp, Professor, Department of Economics (Navy Pier)
Donald R. Hodgman, Professor, Department of Economics
James Leonard, Professor, Finance Department
Verlyn Richards, Graduate Student, Department of Economics
Arthur Welsh, Graduate Student, Department of Economics
Elmus R Wicker, Professor, Department of Economics
Eugene Rotwein, Professor, Department of Economics
Almarin Phillips, Professor, Consultant to Board
E. O. Fults, Bank Examination Staff
Ernest T. Baughman, Research Staff
Karl A. Scheld, Research Staff
Dorothy Nichols, Research Staff
Charlotte Scott, Research Staff
Lynn A. Stiles, Research Staff
Neva Van Peski, Research Staff