New technologies and bank organization. Discussion.

Discussion of the papers "Information technology and banking organization" by Mocetti, Pagnini, Sette and "Bank acquisition and decentralization choices" by Beretta and Del Prete. Both papers deal with decentralization of loan decisions from headquartes to local bank branches. They argue that Italian banks have increased decentralization in order to be closer to local Small and Medium Businesses. The discussion points out that large banks has not entirely achieved this goal, but they have increased their shares in the loans market to big and medium sized firms, and left smaller firms to smaller local banks.