Restrictions on branching were a particularly significant constraint, as they limited the size of the market that individual depository institutions could service and thus their scope to reduce costs through economies of scale.
1 The lifting of these regulations, especially branching  1  For a listing of these rules, see Dean F. Amel and Daniel G. Keane (1986), "State Laws Affecting Commercial Bank Branching, Multibank Holding Company Expansion and Interstate Banking," Issues in Bank Regulation, vol. 10, no. 2 (Autumn), pp.30-40.