Our results suggest that stronger competition implies significantly lower interest rate spreads for most loan market products, as we expected. This result implies that bank interest rates are lower and that the pass-through of market rates is stronger, the heavier competition is. We find evidence of the latter in our error correction model of bank interest rates. Furthermore, when loan market competition is stronger, we observe larger bank spreads (that is, lower bank interest rates) on current account and time deposits. Lower time deposits rates are confirmed by the estimates of the ECM. Apparently, the competitive pressure in.
