European banking landscape between diversity, competition and concentration.

Causes and consequences of institutional diversity are a largely neglected issue in economics. Only in finance, institutional variety has been at times acknowledged, though not in its ›institution-free‹ neoclassical version. Still, extant research has primarily focused on the juxtaposition of bank- vs. market-based financial systems. Given the strong interconnectedness between banks and markets, this is for sure a too binary perspective. Differential responses to the Great Financial Crisis have highlighted the pertinence of institutional diversity for the performance as well as resilience of (national) financial systems. Nonetheless, financial diversity is still poorly researched and underestimated. In order to motivate more research on the role of banking sector and financial intermediary diversity for the performance of economies and societies, we review recent research in this area and present empirical findings.