Suchergebnisse

This paper discusses the impact of deregulation and market integration policies on the structure of European banking markets. The paper argues that whether European integration will lead to an increased exploitation of scale advantages, or not, will depend on the extent to which competition in banking is based on fixed or variable costs. If competition focuses on variable costs, concentration will diminish with market enlargement when we control for the pro-concentration effect triggered by the deregulation process. Alternatively, when competition focuses on expenses unrelated to the level of intermediation, concentration will not tend to decline as the size of the market grows. This is due to the compensating effect of increased competition in fixed costs such as brand image or electronic banking. I propose a simple test using aggregate data to provide an empirical assessment of the dominant form of competition. The application of this procedure to data for eleven EU countries during the period from 1981 to 1995 yields parameter estimates which indicate that over the period of analysis, competition in Europe tends to be predominantly based on variable costs.

This paper assesses the effectiveness of vertical industrial policies within the European Union. Vertical industrial policy is defined as government support of specific firms or industries ('picking winners' or 'supporting losers'). It is measured as state aid granted by Member States to the manufacturing sectors, with the aim to analyse to what extent this government intervention affects the growth of multifactor productivity (MFP) in manufacturing. The analysis is conducted with both sectoral and horizontal aid, since in many cases vertical aid is disguised as aid pursuing horizontal objectives. Controlling for the potential endogeneity of state aid policy, the results indicate that vertical state aid contributes positively to MFP growth.

This paper presents new data, in the form of four indices, on liberalization policies and the independence of regulators for a cross section of countries. These indices are combined with a comprehensive set of performance, institutional and political data to analyze both the determinants and the impact of telecommunications policies. We find that liberalization policies are negatively associated with the degree to which countries have an interventionist tradition, but not with the partisan ideology of reforming countries per se. We also find that countries where the institutional endowment constrains less the behavior of the executive bodies, and countries with a stronger incumbent, are more prone to create truly independent regulatory agencies. There is weak evidence that the creation of independent regulatory agencies has a positive effect on network penetration when we take into account the endogeneity of regulatory independence.