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Deregulation shifts the responsibility for mitigation of agency problems from the regulatory parties to the firms' shareholders. We investigate whether and how governance structure changes in response to the dynamics of the new business environment after the Regulatory Reform Act of 1994 for the US trucking industry. We show that deregulation increases market competition in the trucking industry. The deregulated trucking firms not only adjust internal governance structure but also alter antitakeover provisions to adapt themselves to the competitive status of business environment after deregulation.

In 2013-2014, Bank Muscat and National Bank of Oman requested a merger and Bank Sohar and Bank Dhofar lodged a similar request. This paper aims to investigate the shape of the market structure, and it tries to answer whether approving such requests is good for the industry, economy and society.

The study examines the market structure of Oman Banking Industry, and it also presents the shape of the market structure if there had been an approval for these mergers’ requests. The Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) and the biggest k-banks Concentration Ratio (CRk), which measure concentration changes over 17 years during the period 1998-2014, are used in this study.

The study finds that Oman’s Banking Industry is highly concentrated, which should cause concerns over these two requests of mergers or similar requests in the future. In general, the concentration ratio shows decreasing trend. The concentration ratio in the deposit market implies a concentrated market with CR2 and CR3 recording 67 and 85%, respectively, while HHI reached 2,864 points in the 1998. However, in 2014, the concentration ratio had decreased, to CR2 and CR3 recording 52 and 65% respectively, and HHI standing at 2,112 points.

The researcher suggests future investigation and further research in setting a benchmark index as a guideline for mergers’ requests.

Exercising monopoly power, by fewer banks, is very harmful to the economy. Charging higher interest rates on business loans escalates the cost of production of products and services which will cause inflation; therefore, monopoly power will lead to slow growth of the economy.

Regulators in Central Bank of Oman (CBO) or in any central bank should be very careful in granting mergers, especially among big banks, because it enables newly bigger banks to exercise monopoly power, thereby harming depositors who will be getting low deposit interest rates and harming borrowers by charging them high loan interest rate.

Even though, this study discussed two requests of mergers between banks in Oman; however, it has presented formal approaches to the measurement of market structure in any country. Overall, it provides the policymakers in making the final decisions on mergers between banks in the future which are not limited to these banks or to Oman’s Banking Industry.

This study examines whether dividend payout, an internal corporate governance mechanism, is a substitute for or an outcome of product market competition, an external corporate governance mechanism. The sample includes firms in six of the world’s most prominent economies. We find that firms in more competitive industries pay less in the way of dividends to their shareholders, which is consistent with the notion that dividends and competition are substitutes. We also determine that the above negative relationship is weaker in countries with stronger regulation protecting minority shareholders against corporate self-dealing. Furthermore, the relationship has attenuated following the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that increased regulation and enhanced governance standards. Collectively, our findings provide consistent evidence across countries that the two corporate governance mechanisms examined in the study are substitutes, and greater regulation weakens the substitution effect. Our empirical findings are robust to alternative measures of dividend payout, industry definition, and shareholder protection.

Academic research has intensively analyzed the relationship between market concentration or market power and banking stability but provides ambiguous results, which are summarized under the concentration-stability/fragility view. We provide empirical evidence that the mixed results are due to the difficulty of identifying reliable variables to measure concentration and market power.

Using data from 3,943 banks operating in the European Union (EU)-15 between 2013 and 2020, we employ linear regression models on panel data. Banking market concentration is measured by the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI), and market power is estimated by the product-specific Lerner Indices for the loan and deposit market, respectively.

Our analysis reveals a significantly stability-decreasing impact of market concentration (HHI) and a significantly stability-increasing effect of market power (Lerner Indices). In addition, we provide evidence for a weak (or even absent) empirical relationship between the (non)structural measures, challenging the validity of the structure-conduct-performance (SCP) paradigm. Our baseline findings remain robust, especially when controlling for a likely reverse causality.

Our results suggest that the HHI may reflect other factors beyond market power that influence banking stability. Thus, banking supervisors and competition authorities should investigate market concentration and market power simultaneously while considering their joint impact on banking stability.

As the pharmaceutical industry is one of the key sectors of the health-care system, the identification of its structure is of particular importance. This paper aims to determine the structure of the pharmaceutical industry in Iran to provide appropriate solutions for pricing and regulation by policymakers. Iran is a growing pharmaceutical market with over $4bn in sales, so the supply side needs to be examined to meet the domestic consumption.

This research is a descriptive and retrospective analytical study which examines the Iranian pharmaceutical industry through library studies and using pharmaceutical data of the country’s Food and Drug Administration during 1992-2016. Due to data availability in firm level, the concentration ratio of N leading firms and the Herfindahl–Hirschman index are used to measure the concentration of the pharmaceutical market in 2014 and 2016.

The results show that pharmaceutical manufacturing, importing companies and distributing companies play roles in monopolistic competition market, loose oligopoly market and oligopoly market, respectively. For all companies, the magnitudes of Herfindahl–Hirschman indices indicate non-competitive settings. As a result, these companies set their own prices, and market demand affects their sales. In addition, demand for medicines is shaped in the form of supply-induced demand.

This research was accomplished with no computational limitation. However, it was confined to only one country, one industry and the mentioned period of study.

The pharmaceutical manufacturers have no influence on medicine prices, and government pricing regulations lessen the market power of such market agents. However, the easy entry to and exit from market stimulate producers to participate in manufacturing activities. The pharmaceutical importers may expand their imports in response to entry new actors; however, the new entrants weaken the coordination on pricing decisions.

As pharmaceutical distributers act in an oligopoly market, they can collude, reduce competition and lower the welfare of pharmaceutical consumers. In such conditions, high investment requirements and economies of scale may discourage the entry of new firms.

Although there are various studies on market structure in non-pharmaceutical industries, this study is a new effort to measure concentration in the Iranian pharmaceutical market and to determine its structure.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of competition in the Malaysian Islamic banking industry and the market structure of the industry by focusing on the particular impact created by the entrance of fully fledged foreign Islamic banks plus the introduction of Islamic subsidiaries of existing conventional banks in the country (domestic and foreign ownership).

Using a sample of 16 Islamic banks in the country that operated between 2008 and 2015, this paper measures the competition among the Islamic banks using the Panzar-Rosse Model and by looking at the market structure of the industry using the k-bank concentration ratio and the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index.

The study found that between 2008 and 2015, the Malaysian Islamic banking industry operated in monopolistic competition conditions with a moderately concentrated market structure. The introduction of foreign Islamic banks caused the market structure to become more competitive and less concentrated by comparing the results that include foreign Islamic banks against the results generated with a subsample of domestic Islamic banks only. Bank Negara Malaysia’s (BNM’s) financial reform and the liberalisation of the financial system were proven to induce competition making the financial system more resilient, competitive and dynamic. The Islamic banks have recorded consistently increased annual performance with the under-performing Islamic banks catching up on the top performers.

Very few research studies have focused on the market structure and competition of the Islamic banking industry in Malaysia, especially using recent financial data; this study will contribute to filling the existing gap.

This paper aims to empirically analyze the impact of export diversification on gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth.

Using system generalized method of moments (GMM), a nonlinear model in a dynamic panel data growth framework for 101 countries between 1995 and 2019 was estimated.

Results evidenced that export concentration, measured by the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI), is negatively associated with GDP per capita growth after controlling for the effects of other explanatory variables. Further, the squared term of HHI used in the model to measure the nonlinear relationship between export concentration and economic growth indicated that the low-income and lower-middle-income countries benefited from export diversification. At the same time, high-income and upper-middle-income countries perform well with their export specialization. The results of the robustness check validate the findings of nonlinear estimation.

The findings recommend that low-income and lower-middle-income countries diversify their export basket to improve economic growth by generating stable export earnings. Similarly, high-income and upper-middle-income countries should focus on measures to close the product lines which no longer belong to their factor endowments and rebalance their export basket.

This study contributes to the existing literature by using the system GMM method, which is most appropriate for a dynamic panel data growth framework with up-to-date data. Further, this study segregates a large panel into 43 concentrated and 58 diversified countries to test the robustness of the empirical results.

The expansion of the Islamic banking industry seems to accentuate the banking competition in MENA and Southeast Asia where conventional and Islamic banks coexist. In this context, the research aims\ to examine the competitive conditions and the market power of the conventional and Islamic banks during the period 2004-2009 in MENA and Southeast Asia region.

The authors use a variety of structural and non-structural measures related to the traditional approach and the new empirical approach of the industrial organization. The methodology is based on set of measures of the competition and market power. The first measure is a set of concentration ratios (C3, C5) and Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI). The second measures are the Panzar and Ross H statistic and the Lerner index based on econometric estimations with the aim of evaluating the structure of market and measuring its power in terms of price setting.

The results indicate that under the HHI index, both markets are low concentrated, while according to the concentration ratios, the Islamic market is considered as moderately concentrated. The estimations results, through the H-PR-statistic of Panzar and Ross related to degree of competition and the Lerner index of market power, indicate that both markets are characterized by a monopolistic competition and the Islamic banking expressed a high degree of market power.

The research focuses exclusively on the countries where the data are available and excludes the other countries where competition and market power might have different forms.

In a competitive environment, each bank is required to analyze the structure of its market and competitive conditions, in order to develop a business strategy and effective action plans. In the context of the multiplication of the Islamic banks in the MENA and Southeast Asia, the enhancement of Islamic bank competitiveness by offering new products is determinant for their success.

To the best of the authors' knowledge few studies have examined this subject in a comparative analysis between the Islamic and conventional banks. So the authors contribute to the literature on Islamic banking by considering a sample of Islamic and conventional banks operating in the same countries in order to examine the existence or not of difference between them.

Professional sports teams employ highly paid managers and coaches to train players and make tactical and strategic team decisions. A large literature analyzes the impact of manager decisions on team outcomes. Empirical analysis of manager decisions requires a quantifiable proxy variable for manager decisions. Previous research focused on manager dismissals, tenure on teams, the number of substitutions made in games or the number of healthy players on rosters held out of games for rest, generally finding small positive impacts of manager decisions on team success.

The authors quantify manager decisions by developing a novel measure of game-specific coaching decisions: the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) of playing-time across players on a team roster over the course of a season.

Evidence from two-way fixed effects regression models explaining observed variation in National Basketball Association team winning percentage over the 1999–2000 to 2018–2019 seasons show a significant association between managers’ allocation of playing time and team success. A one standard deviation change in playing-time HHI that reflects a flattened distribution of player talent is associated with between one and two additional wins per season, holding the talent of players on the team roster constant. Heterogeneity exists in the impact across teams with different player talent.

This is one of the first papers to examine playing-time concentration in the NBA. The results are important for understanding how managerial decisions about resource allocation lead to sustained competitive advantage. Linking coaching decisions to wins can help teams to better promote this core product.

The purpose of this study is to look at the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE's) progress toward economic diversification and becoming a knowledge-based economy.

The World Development Indicators (WDI) and GlobalEconomy websites provided all secondary data for this paper. The data are largely used to highlight the UAE's current level of diversification and, consequently, the atmosphere for a knowledge economy transition necessary for sustainable development. Additionally, the study conducts a nonparametric estimation using DEA to identify the condition of four variables pertaining to the UAE's knowledge economy. The Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI) was utilized empirically in this study to determine the current state of diversity.

According to this research, the UAE economy was reasonably diverse until recently. The number of patents and journal papers published per resident both add to the UAE's GDP. Furthermore, the UAE's information and communication technology (ICT) exports are inconsistent; a declining trend in the number of researchers and the education sector's continuous struggles are major concerns. Furthermore, Figure 1 in the introduction reinforces this conclusion by noting that construction and building remained the greatest employer of labor throughout the time period. This is a significant finding because, as illustrated in this research, low labor force participation in the education sector, combined with lower citizen participation in advanced education in the UAE, results in low scientific research and publications, with low knowledge output as patent applications. In general, the majority of the UAE's population is expat, and the extent to which locals and expats contribute to the overall advancement of education remains an open question. According to the data envelopment analysis (DEA) model, three variables in the knowledge economy are productive, and they are economic incentive and institutional regime, innovation systems and ICT. The findings of this article will aid policymakers in the UAE, and more generally in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, in developing more successful policies that help in the growth of a knowledge- and innovation-based economy.

This study is appropriate for UAE economic policymakers to monitor the state and policies required for the UAE's transition to a knowledge economy.

This issue has rarely been addressed by the use of robust parametric and nonparametric processes, as well as robust data visualization tools.