Suchergebnisse

This paper looks at the regulatory component of India's electricity reforms from four perspectives. Concerns about governance standards for the sector that set the context ofreforms are noted first, and the re-allocation of powers that reforms brought about is discussed with particular reference to federal issues and the centre–state interface. The paper then evaluates the impact of regulatory reforms on selected performance parametersof the sector. The finding here is that potential gains largely remain to be realised. Next,the new regulatory architecture is compared with the patterns of reforms undertakenin a group of developed countries to draw the conclusion that the design is sound and appropriate for the country's needs. The reasons for the sub-optimal impact are then taken up: these broadly pertain to large capacity shortcomings and ownership patterns that remain much as before the reforms. The paper concludes by noting a few measures that could help to enhance regulatory effectiveness.

The author presents an overview of web archiving in an international context, focussing on web archiving initiatives in the United Kingdom from 2001 onwards.

Although there is anecdotal evidence that merger control may constitute a barrier to the integration of European retail banking markets, systematic empirical evidence is missing until now. This paper aims to fill this gap. Based on a unique dataset on the transparency on merger control in the EU banking sector, we estimate the probability that a bank is taken over as a function of its characteristics, country characteristics and the transparency of merger control in the banking sector. The results indicate that a bank is systematically more likely to be taken over by foreign credit institutions if the regulatory process is transparent. Particularly large banks are less likely to be taken over by foreign credit institutions if merger control lacks transparency. This is in line with the hypothesis that governments may block crossborder bank merger because they want the largest institution in the country to be domestically owned. Domestic mergers are not affected. This suggests that merger control may therefore constitute an important barrier to cross-border consolidation and that further integration of EU banking markets requires a higher degree of transparency of the regulatory process.