... do with the ratio of the number of markets in which a bank operates in the years before and after the merger. Again, we include the cross-product of the CNM variable and the time after the merger ... defining the impact of a bank merger on deposit rates, we concentrate on two major issues, the evolution of the effect of a bank merger over time; and the question of how many of a given bank s ... ],,(1+∈iixxx = 0, otherwise, (12) and where x is the value of the explanatory variable (the time distance to the merger, in our case). The values ix denote the “knots” of the spline, and the coefficients,...