Costi e prezzi nelle banche: riflessioni in merito alle peculiarità relative alla funzione di produzione”

The essay is about pricing policies in banks. A conceptual framework is presented, in which the main variables and their interactions are described: market, regulation, objectives, policies and processes. Then the productive function of banks and the related costs behaviour are analysed, under two perspectves: financial (coming from corporate finance theories) and microeconomic (neo classical and marginalist theories). The main features of productive function of the bank are studied, with reference both to the financial inputs and to the real inputs. For what concerns the first aspect, the following issues are investigated: the role of financial and the optimal mix between equity and debt, the allocation of financial costs to lending products (costs of provision and costs of equity), the existence of a market of financial inputs with infinite elasticity (interbank market), the measurement of risk and of its cost. For what concerns real inputs, the main issues are the high incidence of fixed operating costs and of joint production costs, the low relevance of marginal cost approach, the frequent excess of productive capacity, the strict link between the cost functions of financial products and fee—based services . These problems are analysed in a formal way with the help of marginalist approach. Two different hypothesis are evaluated in the analysis of the productive function of financial products and fee based services, and for the adoption of best pricing policies: separated productive function and joint productive function