Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature and the extent of moderation effect of the regulatory regime and competition, on the innovativeness-performance relationship among financial services firms. Based on the absorptive capacity theory, this study argues that firms must gather adequate knowledge from the external environment (specifically on regulatory systems and competitive landscape) to assist in developing competitive innovation strategies, and to realize the needed performance benefits from such strategies.

Data were collected from the Ghana’s financial services sector with a focus on banking and insurance institutions. Structural equation modeling and regression models were specified to test both the direct effects of variables of interest, and the moderation effects of environmental factors on the independent and dependent variables.

The results of the study show that both process and product innovativeness enhance financial services firms’ performance. While competition was found to stifle innovativeness, regulatory regime was found to promote innovativeness in financial services. Regulatory regime was also found to positively moderate the relationship between process innovativeness and performance, while competition was found to positively moderate the relationship between product innovativeness and performance.

The firms sampled are from an emerging economy with a growing financial services sector, and as a result, the findings may not apply to contexts with different economic characteristics.

This study asserts that in enhancing innovativeness in the financial services markets, firms must recognize the value of new external information on regulatory regime and competition as key environmental factors. Financial service firms must assimilate, transform, and apply such new knowledge in their innovation efforts in order to improve performance. For firms to fully benefit from their innovation, process innovativeness must be aligned with regulatory systems while product innovation yields best returns in competitive periods.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

This paper aims to provide an overview of different issues related to jurisdictional arbitrage found in general regulatory arbitrage literature and their projection to the specific area of cryptoasset regulation.

By distinguishing any parallel, analogous and neighbouring concepts, this paper attempts to clarify the notion of jurisdictional arbitrage. By discussing certain aspects and effects of three regulatory regimes, BitLicense, 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD5) and the European Commission’s Proposal for a Regulation on Markets in Crypto-assets (MiCa), it makes clear that national/State/regional policymakers have already failed to create arbitrage-proof regulatory frameworks by acting exclusively within their jurisdictional limits. Against this background, this paper discusses briefly regulatory competition and international harmonisation as alternative solutions to inappropriate and ineffective national/regional legislative approaches.

Based on a structured theoretical analysis, this paper reaches three important findings. First, academics, international bodies and other commentators use inaccurately the general concept of “regulatory arbitrage” to refer to the specific problem of jurisdictional arbitrage creating in this way an interpretative confusion; second, commentators confuse jurisdictional conflicts with jurisdictional arbitrage; third, the solutions to this regulatory problem can actually be found in its underlying causes.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first specific-issue paper on jurisdictional arbitrage in the context of cryptoasset regulation and aims to trigger further academic discussion on this evolving phenomenon and inform the development of future cryptoasset regulation combatting this problem.

Under the new European regulatory communications framework coming into effect in summer 2003, market analyses will be subject to a different and much wider analytical scope. Whereas traditional market analysis has been primarily based on critical market share values, the relevant articles of the framework directive explicitly call for a more holistic and economically based perspective in carrying out competition analyses in predefined communications markets. This article discusses institutional aspects and provides an organizational framework for conducting market analyses that is applicable to all relevant communication markets. The resulting reference model is shown to be embedded in traditional competition concepts.

This article addresses the relationship of universities to their changing regulatory environments internationally.

This article updates analysis published in 2004 exploring the contrasting modes of, and key trends in, regulation of higher education across eight OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) states. The article offers a wider analysis of the changing patterns of regulation rooted in mutuality, oversight, competition and design, and the implications for the management of higher education institutions.

Since 2004, higher education has seen more growth in oversight-based and competition-based regulation, but also some decentralization of regulation as an increasing cast of actors, many international and transnational in character, have asserted themselves in key aspects of the regulatory environment. This article explores the implications of these changes in the regulatory mix over higher education for the ways that universities manage their regulatory environment, arguing first, that there is significant evidence of meta-regulatory approaches to regulating universities, and second, that such a meta-regulatory approach is consistent with an emphasis on university autonomy, raising a challenge for universities in how to use the autonomy (variable by country) they do have to manage their environment.

This article offers an original analysis of how universities might most appropriately respond, deploying their autonomy, however variable, to address their external regulatory environment. The author suggests we might increasingly see the external regulatory environment as meta-regulatory in character and universities making more use of reflexive governance processes.

The purpose of this paper is to retrace some of the key factors leading to the enactment of competition law in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the prevailing debates for such laws to be enacted in Hong Kong (HK). The regulatory journeys of one country under two different administrations is another interesting dimension, where one is a modern economy under a quasi‐democratic government, the other is a developing one, labelled as a “market economy with socialist characteristics” under a centralised socialist government.

The authors begin with a brief introduction to the PRC Anti Monopoly Law (AML), followed by an overview of the act, and then address the uncertainties in various provisions as well as enforcement issues. The next part devolves into the debates in enacting competition law in HK, which has yet to become law.

Despite the detailed proposal transplanting many ideas from the laws of other modern economies, there are some provisions that are either weak or that continue to safeguard the interest of monopolies in selective sectors. Central to the experiences for both administrations is to balance between conventional wisdom in economic laws and domestic economic interests.

Since, the laws in PRC are newly enacted and HK is still in the drafting process, the arguments highlighted in this paper tend to address the current concerns.

The value of this comparative paper is to reveal the choice of regulatory strategies in HK and PRC.

This paper contrasts the regulatory experience of the telecommunications industry in two regions, Africa and the Caribbean. Whilst possessing some socio‐economic similarities, they remain quite distinct in terms of size and political history. In particular the relatively more stable Caribbean political history has secured a firm basis for the democratic process and the development of institutional infrastructure supportive of good governance. Therefore, despite a monopoly telecommunications structure evident in both regions, the Caribbean has generally been more successful in forestalling anti‐competitive behaviour than in the case of African economies. In this respect a critical role has been played by competition policy supporting the view of the prominence of legislative endowments in informing regulatory governance.

The primary purpose of the paper is to demonstrate how corporate responsibility and accountability could be fostered through monitoring and the involvement of governments in the regulation of firms.

In considering why practices which stimulate incentives for private agents to exert corporate control should be encouraged, this paper highlights criticisms attributed to government control of banks. However, the theory relating to the “helping hand” view of government is advanced as having a fundamental role in the regulation and supervision of banks.

Governments have a vital role to play in corporate responsibility and regulation given the fact that banks are costly and difficult to monitor – this being principally attributed to the possibility that private agents will lack required incentives or the ability to supervise banks.

Banks are costly and difficult to monitor – this being principally attributed to the possibility that private agents will lack required incentives or the ability to supervise banks.

The paper illustrates how structures which operate in various systems, namely, stock market economies and universal banking systems, function (and attempt) to address gaps which may arise as a result of lack of adequate mechanisms of accountability.

The paper also draws attention to the impact of asymmetric information (generally and in these systems), on levels of monitoring procedures and how conflicts of interests which could arise between banks and their shareholders, or between governments and those firms being regulated by the regulator, could be addressed.

Through its supervision of banks, governments also assume an important role where matters related to the fostering of accountability are concerned – not only because banks may have the power to affect firm performance, but also because some private agents are not able to afford internal monitoring mechanisms.

The jurisprudence concerning the regulation of mergers and acquisitions in the Indian context, from the perspective of competition law, is vast. Mergers and acquisitions in India have been regulated by the Indian Companies Act, the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act and several sector specific legislations. After their notification in June 2011, Ss. 5 and 6 of the Competition Act read with the Combination Regulations of 2011 is the primary law that currently governs this field. In this paper, the authors, using a comparative perspective, analyse whether the present legal regime is effective in tackling the problems associated with regulating mergers in the Indian and international context. These problems include identifying the appropriate market definition, devising an effective test to weed out mergers that cause an “appreciable adverse competition”, understanding the roles of the multiple sector‐specific regulatory bodies, inter alia. It is concluded that the present regime does not deal with several of these important concerns.

The approach is both analytical and comparative. This paper provides an in‐depth study of a recent development in the law relating to mergers and acquisitions in India, which has cross‐border implications.

The paper shows that the application of Ss. 5 and 6 of the Indian Competition Act has serious flaws which need to be ironed out.

As the notification is recent, there is no substantive writing in the field. This paper bridges that gap. Also, this paper provides comparative perspectives, juxtaposing the Indian regime with the US and EU regimes where applicable.

Amidst the backdrop of a wide array of structural developments that have revolutionized the competitive landscape of Indian commercial banking, this paper aims to empirically examine the role of two external monitoring mechanisms – competition and concentration on financial stability and further highlights the significance of bank-level heterogeneity in the nexus.

The study uses the Lerner index, defined through a translog specification, as a measure of market power. A system generalized method of moments technique accounts for the dynamic associations among the competition-concentration-stability nexus. The study further examines the moderating effect of ownership, size and capitalization on the nexus. The study also uses the Boone indicator and comments on the competition-bank stability relationship after controlling for bank governance.

The findings indicate that banks are less stable in a more competitive and higher concentrated environment. Exploring bank-level heterogeneity, first, the authors report that as competition increases, state-owned banks have greater incentives to undertake risky activities than private and foreign banks, which point to implicit sovereign guarantees that characterize the former. Second, the authors document an adverse influence of competition on the soundness of larger banks consistent with the “too-big-to-fail” assertion. Third, results corroborate the disciplinary role of regulatory capital and lend support to stricter capital norms under Basel III in a more competitive environment.

This paper is perhaps the first to capture competition and concentration in a single model; to reconcile conflicting evidence on competition-risk nexus; to shed light on the joint effect of competition and Basel accords for Indian banks.