Purpose This study examines the relationship between mergers and acquisitions (M&As) among U.S. commercial banks and county-level agricultural lending. Design/methodology/approach We aggregate bank-level information sourced from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to county-level data and employ the Callaway and Sant’Anna (2021) estimator to explore how bank M&As are related to changes in commercial banks’ agricultural loan volume. Findings The estimates show that counties experiencing a commercial bank M&A subsequently exhibit statistically and economically significant declines in agricultural loan volumes held by commercial banks, with no evidence of differential pre-trends. These patterns are robust in subsamples focusing on rural counties and on community banks. Originality/value Research examining the localized effect of bank M&A activities remains limited. Our study bridges this research gap by incorporating the latest available data to conduct a detailed analysis at the local level.
Ju et al. (Thu,) studied this question.