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The purpose of this paper is to measure and examine the relationships between market power, scale economy and productivity for several important food and tobacco industries in China.

The model applied in this paper is based on Hall’s framework (Hall, 1988, 1990) and Klette (1999). The paper relaxes the assumption of constant returns to scale, and estimates market power and rate of returns to scale simultaneously, and then employs a covariance approach to examine the relationship between market power, scale economy and productivity via an unbalanced panel data at firm level.

Empirical results indicate that all the selected seven food industries are characterized with significant market power, especially for China’s cigarette industry whose markup is as almost five times as the smallest one. In addition, China’s soybean and cigarette sectors are manifested to have scale economy, with return to scale being larger than 1, while the other five sectors are proved to have decreasing returns to scale. Empirical results also provide evidence to support significant negative correlations between market power and scale economy in all sectors, and negative correlations between market power and productivity in most of the selected sectors. While more heterogeneous relationship between scale economy and productivity are found across the selected sectors.

This paper contributes to examine the relationship between market power, scale economy and productivity empirically for Chinese food manufacturers using a firm-level unbalanced panel data. Results which coincide well with the reality provide policy implication on understanding the situation of market structure for China’s food and tobacco industry.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors affecting profitability of pharmaceutical company in Indonesia. While research and development has been the main discussed issues in pharmaceutical sector development, scant attention has been paid to profitability factors determined by financial ratio specifically. The industry itself faces significant disruption with the implementation of universal health coverage in Indonesia. This study investigates the factors affecting profitability in an Indonesian pharmaceutical company after the national health insurance policy implementation.

This research is based on five independent variables (IVs) with six measurements that were empirically examined for their relationship with profitability. These variables are firm size (as measured by total sales), company efficiency (assets turnover), liquidity (current ratio), market power (the Lerner index) and a firm's growth (as measured by sales growth and sustainable growth rate). Data of ten pharmaceutical companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange covering the period of 2014–2018 were extracted from companies' annual reports. Pooled ordinary least squares regression and fixed effects were used to analyze the data.

The findings show strong and positive relationships between liquidity and sustainable growth rate with profitability as measured by return on equity (ROE), return on assets (ROA) and earning per share (EPS), except EPS for liquidity. Further, both firm size and market power show positive significant relationships with ROA but negative significant relationships with EPS. Sales growth and company efficiency (as measured by assets turnover ratio) have no significant relationship with profitability.

Due to data availability, the data include only listed pharmaceutical companies in the Indonesia Stock Exchange.

These results benefit internal users (such as managers, shareholders and employees). They can realize the determinants of enhancing the profitability of their company after the implementation of universal health coverage from the Indonesian government (JKN – Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional) since 2014. On the other side, other external users (such as investors, creditors, newly established pharmaceutical companies and tax authorities) also may get advantages of these results. It is clear that a significant impact happened upon this new policy implementation, and how an Indonesian pharmaceutical company will be profitable in the future. The relevance of company's business strategy (product and customer portfolio, competitor intelligence, etc.) with the profitability factors from this study can be further scrutinized as further consideration for both internal and external users.

This study differs from previous studies in many ways; first, it focuses on pharmaceutical companies in Indonesia. Previous studies have concentrated on different countries and companies in other sectors, such as services, banking and financial institutions or on industrial organizations. Second, this study analyzes the data from pharmaceutical companies' annual reports since 2014. There was a significant event of universal health coverage (national health insurance) implementation from the Indonesian government. Third, the study used ROE, ROA and EPS as indicators of profitability. Last but not least, the results of the study provide empirical evidence that firms with significant market power, good liquidity and well-managed sustainable growth rate improve operating income and ultimately enhance profitability.

To compare the profitability and technical efficiency of firms in a monopoly industry, airports, operating with different degrees of market power and under differing regulatory regimes, minimalist in New Zealand and interventionist in Australia.

Unlike previous privatisation studies, this study measures efficiency and profitability separately. Using data envelopment analysis (DEA), the technical efficiency of privatised airports is assessed, and this independent measure is used in regression analyses to determine whether efficiency, regulation or privatisation is related to airport profitability.

For firms with monopolistic characteristics operating under minimalist regulation, profitability is related to market power, not efficiency improvements. For firms operating in a regulated environment, profitability is related to regulation, which constrains market power but does not impede efficiency.

This study is limited by its small sample size and its generalisability due to its single industry and regional focus. However, the findings support assertions that the impact of privatisation cannot be assessed independently of industry structure and regulation.

Policy makers considering SOE privatisation in non‐competitive markets should introduce either competition or regulation if firm efficiency is a desired outcome.

Academics and policy makers should be aware that privatisation and competition are not only complementary, as per the extant literature, but they are essential bedfellows. In the absence of competition, regulation is required to control for market power.

Briefly outlines the background to the 1999 Review. Attempts to explore some of the regulatory options for the future legal framework at EU level. Examines the regulatory goals, instruments and scope of applicability of the future sector. Pinpoints some of the specific regulatory issues to be addressed with regard to mobile communications.

The primary purpose of the study is to examine the role of market power in driving innovation and productivity of intangible intensive firms of eight emerging economies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN-8).

There is hardly any study on emerging economies that explored the causal chain of R&D–innovation–productivity, considering the role of market power in a structural model. Taking advantage of the availability of firm-level data and following the extended version of the Crépon, Duguet and Mairesse (CDM) model, we intend to fill the gap. The CDM model first explores the link between R&D and innovation, then the latter's impact on productivity. Besides, it captures sectoral heterogeneity and the differing roles of technological and institutional innovation on productivity.

The manufacturing firms that held a higher markup had a more significant contribution to driving innovation than services one. While institutional innovation affected productivity positively, technological innovation had the opposite impact. Nevertheless, firms' higher degree of monopoly, in general, worsened productivity outcomes. The estimated results are robust to a range of alterations.

The study offers implications for the competition policy of ASEAN.

The sample of this study accounts for almost half of the world's best-performing emerging economies. Thus, the findings are likely to contribute to the thin literature on market power's role in driving innovation and productivity in the intangible economy of emerging markets.

This study examines the relationship between banks' competition performance and risk-taking behavior concerning the impacts of bank size and the recent global financial crisis. The analysis empirically uses dynamic panel data from 1137 banks of the BRICS countries (i.e. Brazil Russia India China and South Africa) for the period 2000–2015.

Dynamic panel generalized method of moments (GMM) has been used primarily to examine the effect of bank competition on performance and risk-taking. Later the paper validates the core results by using three-stage least squares (3SLS) and incorporating alternative measure of competition in baseline equations.

This study confirms the significant impact of competition that complies with the structure-conduct-performance hypothesis quiet life hypothesis and “competition fragility” view. However, the key robust results are as follows: (1) in competitive markets large banks are more efficient than small banks; (2) there is a nonlinear relationship between competition performance and risk; (3) across bank size competition heterogeneously affects profitability efficiency risk and stability; (4) notably small banks are as efficient as large banks during crisis but shared with risk; and (5) small banks also stable during crisis in highly concentrated markets but less stable in competitive environments.

This study promotes higher market power for the bank's profitability and financial stability. More intently policymakers should nurture both cost and revenue efficiency for large banks as these are less efficient than small banks in concentrated markets though these banks produce risk. Hence those banks should be cautious to minimize non-performing loans and maximize stability regarding financial and efficiency. Based on the nonlinear pattern of competition the regulators should adopt different policies for short and long run. It also recommends encouraging commercial and cooperative banks in the BRICS region as these are more efficient risk-averse and better stabilized than other types of banks.

A good number of studies are available in the current literature which examines the impact of bank competition on either bank performance or risk-taking in a single country or cross country analysis. However, very few studies examine the relationship between bank performance and risk-taking behavior concerning the impacts of competition (non-linear and quadratic) size financial crisis and ownership structure together. Moreover, there is a dearth of literature on this topic that built on BRICS economies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how and why a firm’s product market power affects its dividend policy.

This paper uses three measures of market power? The degree of import competition, Herfindahl-Hirschman index, and Lerner Index? To examine how a firm’s product market power affects its dividend policy. Further, it proposes and tests a risk-based explanation for this impact.

This paper shows that market power positively affects the dividend decision, in terms of both the probability of paying a dividend and the amount of dividend payment. It also provides evidence that the route through which market power affects the dividend decision is business risk: firms with less market power are riskier and hence less likely to pay dividends than firms with more market power.

The results show that product market power may have played an important role in reshaping dividend policy of corporate America.

This study documents the relevance of market power behind dividend policy and therefore adds to the knowledge on the relationship between product markets and corporate financial policies, which is an important and understudied area of corporate finance.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of capital requirements and bank competition on banks' risk-taking behavior in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The study combines both descriptive and analytical approaches. It considers panel data sets and adopts panel data econometric techniques like fixed effects/random effects and generalized method of moments estimator.

Regulatory capital and market competition have different effects according to the bank’s type (Islamic or conventional). The results show that the capital adequacy ratio has a significant impact on the credit risk of conventional banks (CBs) while this effect is irrelevant for Islamic banks (IBs). However, market competition plays a significant role in shaping risk-taking behavior of Islamic banking institutions. Our results indicate that banks with strong market power may pursue risky strategies in the face of increased regulatory pressure (e.g. increased minimum capital requirements). The results were robust to alternative profitability measures and endogeneity checks.

The most important limitation is the lack of data for some banks and years, and this paper had to exclude some variables because of missing observations. The second limitation concerns the number of IBs in the sample. However, this can be overcome by including more countries from MENA and other regions where Islamic banking is a growing phenomenon.

Our findings call for a change in Islamic banking’s traditional business model based on the prohibition of interest. The analysis indicates that market concentration moderates the association between capital requirements and the insolvency risk of IBs but not CBs. Therefore, regulatory authorities concerned with improving financial stability in the MENA region should set up their policies differently depending on the level of banking market concentration. Finally, bank managers are requested to apply a more disciplined approach to their lending decisions and build sufficient capital conservation buffers to limit the impact of downside risk from the depletion of capital buffers during the pandemic.

This study addresses banks’ risk-taking behavior and stability in the MENA region, which includes banks of different types (Islamic and conventional). This paper also contributes to the literature on bank stability by identifying the most critical factors that affect bank risk and stability in the MENA region, which can be relevant in the context of the new global (COVID-19) crisis.

The regulation of electronic communications has been recently reformed in Europe. One striking feature of the review was to base most of the economic regulation – the so‐called significant market power regime – on antitrust principles. In particular, the regulated markets have to be defined according to competition law methodologies. This paper describes this approach and studies in detail the recently adopted Commission recommendation “on relevant markets susceptible to ex‐ante regulation”. The paper concludes with three policy recommendations. First, as regulation is more flexible and more complex, national regulators should co‐operate among themselves and national courts should only reform regulatory decisions in case of manifest error. Second, as regulation is not any more justified by the “original sin” of the previous monopolists, but by the inefficiency of antitrust to control market power, NRA should be cautious not to overly expand their intervention. Third, as ex ante market definitions are aligned on antirust principles, authorities should make sure that market definition is not a goal in itself but only a means to achieve the policy objectives of the sector‐specific regulation.

Intellectual property rights and competition policy are intimately related. In this chapter I survey the economic literature analyzing the interaction between intellectual property law and competition law and how the boundary between these two policies is drawn in practice. Recognizing that intellectual property rights and competition law can interact in many different ways, the presentation focuses on several key issues. The economic literature on the interaction between competition law and intellectual property rights shows that these regulatory systems are consistent in terms of basic principles. Significant tensions exist, however, and it is difficult to balance IPR and competition law in practice. The significant differences in approach between the United States and the European Union simply reflect the underlying reality that efforts to achieve a sensible balance do not result in policy harmonization.