what went wrong with the recent reforms in the southern cone this paper describes and interprets the outcome of the reform packages in chile argentina and uruguay during 1974 83 it is shown that all three countries experienced initial success with the rescue operation from the severe macroeconomic disequilibrium at the inception of the reforms the paper then discusses the areas in which the reforms were successful and why the countries experienced boom bust cycles resulting in large increases in external indebtedness and internal financial crises the paper attributes the failure of the reforms to a combination of policy inconsistencies implementation difficulties and market frictions jointly these factors generated a sustained appreciation of the real exchange rate and a large spread between the cost of dollar denominated and peso denominated loans in turn the appreciation and interest rate difference created protracted opportunities for arbitrage that distracted firms from the business of production

finance and the sources of growth at various stages of economic development this article studies the effects of financial development on the sources of growth in different groups of countries recent theoretical work shows that financial development may affect productivity and capital accumulation in different ways in industrial versus developing countries this hypothesis is tested with panel data from 74 countries using gmm dynamic panel techniques results are consistent with the hypothesis finance has a strong positive influence on productivity growth primarily in more developed economies in less developed economies the effect of finance on output growth occurs primarily through capital accumulation jel o4 g1

more mortgages lower growth in newly collected data on 46 economies over 1990 2011 we show that financial development since 1990 was mostly due to growth in credit to real estate and other asset markets which has a negative growth coefficient we also distinguish between growth effects of stocks and flows of credit we find positive growth effects for credit flows to nonfinancial business but not for mortgage and other asset market credit flows by accounting for the composition of credit stocks and for the effect of credit flows we explain the insignificant or negative growth effects of financial development in recent times what was true in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s when the field of empirical credit growth studies blossomed is no longer true in the 1990s and 2000s new bank lending is not primarily to nonfinancial business and financial development may no longer be good for growth these trends predate the 2008 crisis they prompt a rethink of the role of banks in the process of economic growth jel e44 o16 o40 c33

interest rate policy taxation and risk abstract it is now an established orthodoxy that real interest rates should be positive raising the nominal interest rate above the rate of inflation however does not achieve a positive cost of borrowing if the interest cost of borrowing is tax deductible furthermore high rates of interest and inflation impose heavy risks on borrowers these points are illustrated with data from a sample of countries in eastern and southern africa they strengthen the case for preferring lower inflation to higher nominal interest rates as a way of making real interest rates positive

the variable rate of growth effect in the life cycle saving model the rate of growth in real gnp g affects the aggregate saving rate positively in life cycle saving models this rate of growth effect is invariably estimated as the coefficient of g in the saving function we show that other determinants of the saving rate influence the rate of growth effect in other words the rate of growth effect is not constant specifically the real rate of return on financial assets and the population dependency ratio determine the timing of saving over the life cycle and hence alter the rate of growth effect the dependency ratio also has an effect on the saving rate which is independent of g because it together with the foreign saving rate determines the level of saving over the life cycle

liberalizing foreign investments by pension funds positive and normative aspects abstract the paper evaluates the economics of foreign investment regulation for pension funds with a focus on developing countries where fully funded pension systems are being started de novo the analysis proceeds in three steps first it is argued that the benefits of global portfolio diversification apply particularly to developing country pension assets because the volatility of asset returns is high while the risk tolerance of pensioners is low second restrictions of foreign investmetn by domestic pension funds can hardly be justified on ground of financial development arguments the paper presents crosscountry evidence which shows little support for the claim that the accumulation of pension assets would provide strong externalities for financial development moreover the home bias generally observed in pension fund investment should translate into sufficient potential demand for domestic financial assets as to deepen markets and develop the institutional infrastructure third a case for initial localization requirements however can be derived from the fiscal costs of moving from unfunded to fully funded pension systems if fiscal illustion and domestic tax collection costs are important

the effect of financial development on economic growth a meta analysis in this article we contribute to the current debate on the sign and size of the finance growth relation to this purpose we use a meta analysis with 551 estimates from 68 empirical studies that t

strategic choice of quality when quality is costly the persistence of the high quality advantage in a two firm two stage model of vertical product differentiation i show that for every convex fixed cost function of quality the firm that chooses the higher quality at the first stage earns the higher profits the result holds for the pure strategy equilibrium in the simultaneous quality game and it holds as well if firms choose their qualities in sequential order

a computation of interest equivalences for nonprice characteristics of bank products this paper seeks to price the nonprice features of british retail bank products it outlines a methodology for computing interest equivalences for a selection of characteristics estimates are obtained for a full observation set and a subset of survivor products on an efficiency frontier its main findings are that certain nonprice features are significant and there does not appear to be a strong case for separating out those products that lie on an efficiency frontier copyright 1992 by ohio state university press

competition and collusion in the american automobile industry the 1955 price war movements in total quantity and in quality adjusted price suggest a supply side shock in the american automobile market in 1955 this paper tests the hypothesis that the shock was a transitory change in industry conduct a price war the key ingredients of the test are alternative equilibrium models of oligopoly under product differentiation in nonnested cox tests of hypotheses a collusive solution is sustained in 1954 and in 1956 while a competitive solution holds in 1955 the result does not appear to be an artifact since it is robust in tests against alternative specifications copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

manufacturing growth and financial development evidence from oecd countries recent theoretical models conjecture that the development of the financial sector is essential for economic growth we investigate this hypothesis from a time series perspective and find that financial sector gdp is cointegrated for many oecd countries not so much with manufacturing gdp but mostly with manufacturing total factor productivity moreover this relation is in some instances characterized by long run causality in the sense of granger and lin however even within this homogeneous group of countries the variety of results suggests a more complex picture than is apparent from cross sectional evidence

causal relationship between energy consumption and gdp growth revisited a dynamic panel data approach abstract this paper uses the panel data of energy consumption and gdp for 82 countries from 1972 to 2002 based on the income levels defined by the world bank the data are divided into four categories low income group lower middle income group upper middle income group and high income group we employ the gmm sys approach for the estimation of the panel var model in each of the four groups afterwards the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is tested and ascertained we discover a in the low income group there exists no causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth b in the middle income groups lower and upper middle income groups economic growth leads energy consumption positively c in the high income group countries economic growth leads energy consumption negatively after further in depth analysis of energy related data the results indicate that in the high income group there is a great environmental improvement as a result of more efficient energy use and reduction in the release of co2 however in the upper middle income group countries after the energy crisis the energy efficiency declines and the release of co2 rises since there is no evidence indicating that energy consumption leads economic growth in any of the four income groups a stronger energy conservation policy should be pursued in all countries

financial development growth and the distribution of income a paradigm is presented in which both the extent of financial intermediation and the rate of economic growth are endogenously determined financial intermediation promotes growth because it allows a higher rate of return to be earned on capital and growth in turn provides the means to implement costly financial structures thus financial intermediation and economic growth are inextricably linked in accord with the goldsmith mckinnon shaw view on economic development the model also generates a development cycle reminiscent of the kuznet hypothesis in particular in the transition from a primitive slow growing economy to a developed fast growing one a nation passes through a stage in which the distribution of wealth across the rich and poor widens

minimum quality standards and market dominance in vertically differentiated duopoly abstract the paper establishes conditions for low quality dominance within a vertically differentiated duopoly and studies the consequences for minimum quality standard policies gross surplus from unit consumption consists of a benefit from quality and a baseline benefit consumers are heterogeneous homogeneous with regard to the former latter marginal cost increases in quality the quality then price equilibrium exhibits low quality dominance first in market share and then in profit as baseline benefit increases relative to the willingness to pay for quality the preference structure determines the effect of a minimum quality standard in a way related to the pattern of dominance the standard reduces increases welfare under conditions that lead to low high quality dominance

technical change organizational form and the structure of bank production of those technological characteristics related to the nature of competition among firms in an industry or market scale economies and technical change are especially important economies of scale are said to exist when an equiproportional increase in all inputs results in a greater than proportional increase in output or equivalently when an increase in output at constant input prices leads to a less than proportional increase in total costs thus average costs decline as output expands depending upon the extent to which costs decline as output increases regulation of the firms in the industry may be necessary l the literature analyzing scale economies in commercial banking is voluminous the early studies on scale economies in banking include those by benston 1965 1972 greenbaum 1967 murphy 1972 and bell and murphy 1968 more recent studies include those by benston hanweck and humphrey 1982 and clark 1984 2 this literature has established that mild scale economies exist in bank

a comment on a model of vertical product differentiation in a duopoly model with vertical differentiation if the firms do not cover the market the lower quality firm chooses a quality level exactly 4 7 of that of the higher quality firm and chooses a price that is 2 7 of the price of the higher quality firm copyright 1992 by blackwell publishing ltd

heterogeneous borrowers liquidity and the search for credit abstract we develop a general equilibrium model of credit formation where borrowers and lenders must search for matches and where the composition of borrowers adjusts to satisfy equilibrium entry conditions when market liquidity dries up as a result of fundamental shocks to the system fewer borrowers will participate in the credit market with low quality borrowers suffering disproportionately because of a flight to quality however less liquid credit markets need not be associated with lower social output because the effect of higher average quality may outweigh that of reduced market participation depending crucially on the source of the liquidity shock

certification and minimum quality standards when some consumers are uninformed we compare certification to a minimum quality standard mqs policy in a duopolistic industry where firms incur quality dependent fixed costs and only a fraction of consumers observe the quality of the offered goods compared to the unregulated outcome both profits and social welfare would increase if firms could commit to producing a higher quality an mqs restricts the firms quality choice and leads to less differentiated goods this fuels competition and may therefore deter entry a certification policy which awards firms with a certificate if the quality of their products exceeds some threshold does not restrict the firms quality choice in contrast to an mqs certification may lead to more differentiated goods and higher profits we find that firms are willing to comply with an ambitious certification standard if the share of informed consumers is small in that case certification is more effective from a welfare perspective than a minimum quality standard because it is less detrimental to entry

international trade in banking services abstract this paper investigates which of the theories of international trade best explains trade in international banking in its various forms branches subsidiaries and representatives strong evidence is found to support the newer economies of scale theories and it is proposed that the foreign exchange and capital markets exhibit declining costs to production it is also discovered that the relaxation of exchange and capital controls by potential host countries diminishes the incentives of banks to seek direct representation

credit policy inflation and growth in a financially repressed economy this report analyzes credit policy in an open economy macro model incorporating stylized facts about the financial sector of ldc s absence of security markets existence of a curbmarket these facts are incorporated in the financial sector part of a keynes wicksell growth model it focuses on a transmission channel of monetary policy into the supply side of the economy via the cost of working capital it shows that ignoring this effect when analysing restrictive credit policy leads to underestimates of inflation and overestimation of output and current account improvements it is shown that a credit crunch can be stagflationary in the short run a cut in the real stock of credit is shown to lead to a lower steady state capital stock

financial factors in economic development financial factors have been assigned strategic importance in economic development but very different factors have been isolated in the respective experiences in asia unrepressed financial markets in mobilizing saving and allocating investment have been given prominence in latin america the central question is the role of inflationary finance the scope for deficits to enhance growth and increasingly the feedback from high and unstable inflation to poor economic performance this paper reviews and contrasts the two approaches and concludes that the strong claims for the benefits of financial liberalization are not supported by evidence financial factors are important but probably only when financial instability becomes a dominant force the scope for inflationary finance is small and the risks are larger than commonly accepted when hyperinflation takes over and foreign exchange crises disrupt the price system and shorten the economic horizon to a week or a month normal economic development is suspended moreover difficult to reverse capital flight puts savings outside the home economy attention should focus on these extreme cases and explore deeper the thresholds at which financial factors become dominant and the channels through which this occurs superior growth performance in this perspective may be more a reflection of adaptability than financial deepening this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

determinants of bank growth choice abstract we study the determinants of bank growth in a two stage logistic regression model we first compare banks that branch bank acquire or product expand with banks that do not grow externally banks that are federally chartered in states with higher income growth and with higher labor prices are less likely to grow externally larger banks are more likely to grow externally in the second stage we study determinants of growth activity for banks that expand products branch or acquire other banks depending on the time period bank structure regulatory environment performance and balance sheet characteristics determine bank growth choices

financial intermediation and endogenous growth an endogenous growth model with multiple assets is developed agents who face random future liquidity needs accumulate capital and a liquid but unproductive asset the effects of introducing financial intermediation into this environment are considered conditions are provided under which the introduction of intermediaries shifts the composition of savings toward capital causing intermediation to be growth promoting in addition intermediaries generally reduce socially unnecessary capital liquidation again tending to promote growth

financial development and economic growth a meta analysis we analyze 1334 estimates from 67 studies that examine the effect of financial development on economic growth taken together the studies imply a positive and statistically significant effect but the individual estimates vary widely we find that both research design and heterogeneity in the underlying effect play a role in explaining the differences in results studies that do not address endogeneity tend to overstate the effect of finance on growth while the effect seems to be weaker in less developed countries the effect decreases worldwide after the 1980s our results also suggest that stock markets support faster economic growth than other financial intermediaries

an empirical investigation of changes in scale economies for the commercial banking firm 1979 1986 the period of the 1980s represents a particularly turbulent time for the banking industry a number of technological and regulatory changes have occurred including the elimination of regulation q which had limited the explicit interest payments that banks could pay on some types of deposits it would be expected that these changes would affect the structure of costs for banks the behavior of the cost function is studied over the 1979 1986 time period and in contrast to previous studies using earlier data increasing economies of scale are found in the later years for banks in both unit and branch banking states these results indicate that there may be increased cost pressure for smaller banks to become larger either through mergers and acquisitions or through internal growth this may lead to further consolidation pressures within the industry and reductions in the overall number of banking firms copyright 1991 by ohio state university press

pricing and patents of hiv aids drugs in developing countries this article provides empirical evidence on the impact of patents on drug prices across developing countries it uses sales data on human immunodeficiency virus hiv acquired immuno deficiency syndrome aids drugs in a sample of 34 low and middle income countries between 1995 and mid 2000 the main findings are that patents do shift drug prices up drug prices are correlated to per capita income levels and drug firms follow a skimming strategy when pricing new hiv aids drugs that is there is across country and intertemporal price discrimination in the global drug markets

the price effects of increased competition in auction markets bidding theory predicts low er selling winning bids higher buying winning bids as numbers of bidders incre ase alternative versions predict that winning bids fall rise with the second order statistic the maximum order statistic or 1 n the authors test these pre dictions using data on underwriters spreads on tax exempt bonds offshore oil t racts and national forest timber they estimate winning bids using general vari ables for the product and dummies for 1 2 11 bidders in all cases mor e bidders meansignificantly lower selling winning bids the expected maximum order statistic fits better than either the second order statistic or1 n in te n out of twelve cases copyright 1987 by mit press

a simple model of pharmaceutical price dynamics abstract branded pharmaceutical firms use price and promotional strategy to manage public knowledge about their drugs we propose a dynamic theory of pharmaceutical pricing and conduct an exploratory empirical analysis inspired by the theory our theory predicts a pattern of increasing prices and decreasing promotional activities over a drug s life cycle prices are kept low and advertising levels high early in the life cycle in order to build public knowledge about the drug as knowledge grows prices rise and advertising falls if the management of this stock is important enough this tendency of prices to rise can overwhelm the price decreasing effect of entry by generic competitors late in the drug life cycle we argue that our theory of price dynamics explains empirical regularities in this industry

same financial development yet different economic growth why we re study the relationship between financial development and real gdp per capita growth in 48 countries what we find is an interesting evidence that only stock market development has positive effects on growth and that banking development has an unfavorable if not negative effect on growth we examine whether or not these impacts are a product of various financial and economic conditional variables our conditional variables consist of financial liberalization two sets of country development dummies crises in banking and currency dummies the creditor protection index as well as the anti director and corruption indices our results clearly show that the conditional variables of financial liberalization high income level and good shareholder protection mitigate the negative impacts of banking development on growth in contrast the conditional variables of middle income level regional latin american sub saharan african and east asian dummies banking and currency crises good creditor protection and higher corruption strengthen the negative impacts of banking development on growth next the conditional variables of middle income level latin american sub saharan african and east asian dummies strengthen the positive impacts of stock market development on growth whereas the conditional variables of financial liberalization mitigate the positive impacts of stock market development on growth last we find that the relationship between growth and bank development is better described as a weak inverse ushape this inverse u shape becomes stronger when additional stock market variables are squared thus financial development and growth may in fact be in a nonlinear form

financial development and growth in sub saharan africa do legal origin and cfa membership matter this article examines whether relations between legal origin financial development and economic growth that hold worldwide hold in british and french legal origin sub saharan africa ssa as well we also test for the differential impacts on financial development and on growth of communaute financiere africaine cfa currency union membership within french legal origin ssa our panel regressions and descriptive measures agree with the findings of british legal origin advantage with respect to financial development in addition financial development contributes positively to economic growth in british legal origin ssa as it does worldwide within french legal origin ssa we find that currency union constraints tend to hinder financial development in cfa countries beyond the negative impacts of french legal origin moreover contributions to the growth of various indicators of financial development in french legal origin ssa are negative or insignificant irrespective of cfa membership

financial liberalization in africa abstract recent evidence has shown that african economies are financially repressed and the underlying motives for perpetuating repressive policies still exist increasing real deposit rates mainly through lower inflation promotes financial savings investment and growth financial liberalization in africa has recorded limited success owing to a high and unstable inflation rate the high cost of financial intermediation low bank demand for deposits and persistent government interference in credit markets chronically high fiscal deficits and their adverse impacts on the balance of payments also constitute hurdles for financial deepening in africa

financial development and energy consumption in central and eastern european frontier economies this study examines the impact of financial development on energy consumption in a sample of 9 central and eastern european frontier economies several different measures of financial development are examined including bank related variables and stock market variables the empirical results obtained from dynamic panel demand models show a positive and statistically significant relationship between financial development and energy consumption when financial development is measured using banking variables like deposit money bank assets to gdp financial system deposits to gdp or liquid liabilities to gdp of the three stock market variables investigated only one stock market turnover has a positive and statistically significant impact on energy consumption both short run and long run elasticities are presented the implications of these results for energy policy are discussed

stagflationary effects of stabilization programs in reforming socialist countries enterprise side and household side factors dismantling subsidies could give rise to serious macroeconomic difficulties in the short run this article explores a view based on the enterprise sector as a central source and main channel of the stagflation phenomenon using as an example the stagflation that followed the 1990 stabilization program in poland the stagflation phenomenon is linked to features of the financial market that are somewhat peculiar to reforming socialist economies the weak credit links between households and enterprises and the existence of large interenterprise debt the policy implications of the enterprise side view include more explicit consideration of initial conditions in the credit market implementation of privatization schemes and the development of a domestic banking

products liability and prescription drug prices in canada and the united states this article provides the first estimate of the degree to which product liability costs in this country contribute to the observed differences in pharmaceutical prices between the united states and canada measures of liability risk show up as large and strongly significant explanatory variables in regressions of u s and canadian price differences in the sample used here accounting for liability effects reduces the mean of the predicted price difference distribution by about one half and the median by about one third these reductions come about by virtually eliminating the upper tail of the distribution though liability effects cannot account for all the observed price differences in this sample they clearly must play a role efforts to explain international price differences in drug products which do not take account of the effects of differing legal systems are missing an important effect and suffer from a substantial omitted variable bias

returns to scale and input substitution for large u s banks the united states commercial banking industry has experienced significant changes in recent years the recent wave of mergers and the near term prospects of interstate banking suggests that the industry is moving toward much larger average banking organizations rhoades 1985 will a more concentrated banking industry result in lower costs due to scale economies we address this question by examining the cost function for large banks numerous studies of economies of scale in banking exist generally tracing their roots to the classic papers by benston 1965 and bell and murphy 1968 a good review of the most recent studies can be found in clark 1988 the majority of the papers uses samples of smaller banks that is under 1 billion in deposits finding generally that economies of scale are quickly exhausted and that further increases in bank size occur at constant or possibly increasing cost the extrapolation of previous findings for samples of smaller banks to large banks may be problematic especially in the current environment first large banks service a different mix of markets and customers than small banks suggesting that large and small banks probably face different cost structures second the process of deregulation may have rendered the results of prior studies moot since the data pertain to periods before significant deregulation since we

causality between financial development and economic growth an application of vector error correction and variance decomposition methods to saudi arabia this article makes an attempt to test the possible directions of causality between financial development and economic growth which were labelled by patrick 1966 as the supply leading and demand following hypothesis saudi arabia is taken as a case study the methods applied are the error correction and variance decompositions techniques including the most recently developed long run structural modelling lrsm pesaran and shin 2002 which by imposing exactly identifying and overidentifying restrictions on the cointegrating vector has taken care of a major limitation of the conventional cointegrating estimates in that they were atheoretical in nature to the best of our knowledge there has not been any study on this issue with the application of the techniques that incorporate lrsm the stability of the functions has also been tested by cumulative sum cusum cumulative sum of squares cusumsq and chow test chow tests our findings based on the above mentioned rigorous techniques tend to s

branch bank operating costs evidence from savings banks in finland empirical findings on branch bank operating costs are presented the analyses examine 1988 data for 646 individual branch offices representing 43 savings banks in finland another sample of 48 unit banks with no branches is collected comparisons of plant scale economics are made using the more traditional approach based on aggregate branch bank data versus individual branch office data moreover effects of the number of branches in the branching organization on individual branch office operating costs are examined finally direct comparisons of branch office versus unit bank operating costs are provided

who gains from non collusive corruption non collusive corruption i e corruption that imposes an additional burden on business activity is particularly widespread in low income countries we build a macroeconomic model with credit market imperfections and heterogeneous agents to explore the roots and consequences of this type of corruption we find that credit market imperfections by generating rents for the incumbent entrepreneurs create strong incentives for corrupt behavior by state officials however non collusive corruption not only redistributes income from non officials towards officials but also within the group of potential entrepreneurs if borrowing is limited bribes prevent poorer but talented individuals from starting a business but this is likely to benefit those who may enter anyway the cost of capital is lower and there is less competition on the goods markets

depository institution competition in the deregulated environment the case of the large credit union the purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of deregulation and enhanced competition on the costs and performance of large credit unions using a sample of large credit unions over the period 1979 through to 1985 we find no evidence that credit unions average costs have risen nor do we find evidence that credit unions have suffered adverse changes in operating margins large credit unions not only compete with other depository institutions but appear to have responded well in the newly competitive environment

has the finance growth link been broken panel data evidence from latin america and the caribbean abstract this paper examines the two way relationship between economic growth and financial development for latin america and the caribbean lac the sample consists of 32 emerging and developing countries from lac spanning the period 1970 2014 controlling for country and time fixed effects the first central finding indicates that financial development is not a significant factor driving economic growth the evidence suggests however that larger government has a robust and significant effect on economic growth the second key finding is that the effect of economic growth on financial development is not significantly different from zero together these two main findings indicate that the finance growth link in lac has been broken over the 1970 2014 period the empirical results inform economic debates in lac and highlight the importance of public policy to improve the finance growth relationship

duopoly and quality standards abstract in the absence of sunk costs a low quality producer benefits from a mildly restrictive quality standard whereas a high quality producer suffers from it consumers welfare increases if the firm producing the higher quality does not increase its quality significantly in response to the increase in quality by its rival a sufficiently severe standard causes exit from the industry when there are no sunk cost the high quality producer exits first

the structure of technology in a multioutput branch banking firm we formulate and estimate a multioutput bank s cost function amenable for distinguishing between economies of scale and economies of network density we find significant returns to network density especially for smaller banks diseconomies of scale are found for the larger banks whereas the hypothesis of constant returns to scale could not be rejected for the smaller banks

the financial development and growth nexus a meta analysis this is the accepted manuscript the final version is available from wiley at http onlinelibrary wiley com doi 10 1111 joes 12086 abstract

commercial bank offices and the mobilisation of private savings in selected sub saharan african countries the mobilisation of domestic savings has remained a thriving issue in discussions of ways and means of harnessing resources for development in africa this work attempts to examine the role of a deliberate policy of extending offices of banks to the rural areas in savings mobilisation efforts using ordinary least squares methods data from five african countries that have pursued this policy in recent times are examined to see if there is any significant relationship between the savings rate and their population per bank office ratio our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the extension of branch offices of banks to rural areas could help attenuate the poor savings performance in most african economies

shared atm networks and banking competition abstract in this paper we study the incentives of banks to share their automatic teller machines atms when they are competitors in the market for deposits we construct a stylized model of banking competition which emphasises the distinctive features of atm compatibility we find that in equilibrium either a strict subset of banks share their atms or total incompatibility prevails we also derive the implications for atm compatibility of withdrawal fees interchange bank fees entry and depositor switching costs finally we investigate the normative implications of our model and draw some policy conclusions

informal responses to crises of urban employment an investigation into the structure and relevance of small scale informal retailing in kaduna nigeria simon p b 1998 informal responses to crises of urban employment an investigation into the structure and relevance of small scale informal retailing in kaduna nigeria reg studies 32 547 557 micro enterprises in the informal sector of developing countries arguably possess potential and provide a niche in the employment generation process in the light of continuing economic decline this paper articulates the findings of a study that investigated the socio economic significance of small scale informal retailing in kaduna nigeria findings from this empirical study of informal retailing sustain the proposition that these activities can constitute a dependable source of urban employment income and livelihood the fullest extent of this relevance is however felt mostly by a relatively small category 20 of core informal enterprises in particular retailing practices evidence from this inquiry supports further a conclusion about the existence of a dual informal labour market external policy con

revisiting the finance growth nexus the turkish case 1980 2010 abstractin turkey the empirical results on the link between financial development and economic growth are mixed the existing studies do not take into account the fact that turkey has experienced endemic political and economic instabilities over extended periods this study aims to analyse the role of macroeconomic instability and public borrowing on the finance growth nexus in turkey by using time series econometric techniques over the 1980 2010 period in doing so we attempt to extend the existing literature by taking into account the role of macroeconomic instability as well as public borrowing our results reveal that there are additional albeit indirect channels between finance and growth via the effects of macro instability and public borrowing on financial development and economic growth after taking into account the effects of overall instability and public borrowing we found that growth financial development relationship is bidirectional and permanent in other words in turkish case eco

environmental policy in a green market this paper studies the impact of some frequently used environmental policies in a duopolistic market where purchasers are willing to pay more for less polluting goods when consumers differ in their environmental awareness a cleaner and a dirtier variant coexist in equilibrium the higher the average willingness to pay for the good the lower are variants unit emissions but the higher are industrial aggregate effluents a maximum unit emission standard reduces unit emissions of both variants but boosts firms sales and consequently increases industrial aggregate emissions as a result social welfare may be reduced we also explore the effects of technological subsidies and product charges including differentiation of charges

scale economies in banking a restructuring and reassessment the issue of scale economies in banking has a rich history most earlier studies report modest operating cost scale economies for small institutions those with less than about 50 million of deposits in 1968 dollars but are unclear where these economies might end if at all unfortunately these studies are limited in four important respects first those that were well specified did not measure the total cost of banking operations but concentrated on estimating scale economies for individual banking functions e g demand deposits separately from commercial loans second an average cost curve that could take a u shape over the full range of banks was not fitted either because larger banks were not included or because of the functional form used cobb douglas consequently the optimum or minimum cost size of a bank or office could not be determined third the variables measuring the costs of branching were misspecified fourth the branch

structural change and financing constraints abstract in a multi industry growth model firms need external funds for productivity enhancing r d and face financing constraints the cost of research differs across industries so financing constraints hinder industry productivity growth unevenly equilibrium industry dynamics map into a differences in differences regression specification where industry growth depends on the interaction between country financial development and industry r d intensity the paper provides a framework for interpreting several empirical results that rely on industry growth data in terms of r d induced technology transfer and identifies a new channel for finance to encourage aggregate growth the reallocation of resources towards sectors with rapidly expanding technological frontiers

pricing dynamics in the pharmaceutical industry pricing behaviour has traditionally been approached from the concept of long term static equilibrium this paper argues that this approach is inappropriate at least with respect to the pharmaceutical market because new innovation and patent expiry lead to a continually changing environment a theoretical analysis argues that price change will depend on the age of the therapeutic class the degree of brand loyalty the extent to which it is sold over the counter rather than on prescription and measures of competition the empirical results based on an analysis of the leading twenty five therapeutic class of pharmaceuticals in the usa the uk west germany and france over the period 1981 1988 tends to support the theoretical conclusions although it would appear that government controls in the uk are distorting profit maximizing behaviour more than in the other three countries

modelling pharmaceutical price changes in germany a function of competition and regulation in this article price changes for pharmaceuticals in germany are modelled as a function of regulation and competition changes in the regulatory environment and in the competitive environment of a product are taken into account to follow the hierarchical structure a four level random intercept model was constructed price changes were allowed to vary randomly between drug classes between different substances within a drug class and between different manufacturers of a substance this study provides evidence that two policy measures reference pricing and temporary price freezes succeeded in reducing prices in germany between january 2004 and june 2006 for off patent substances depending on the competition faced by a drug the effect of competition can be greater than the effect of regulation the study therefore not only demonstrates the importance of competition between and within drug classes it also provides evidence that generic entry has substantial effects on the prices of branded p

good bye financial repression hello financial crash some unintended consequences of financial liberalization in latin america are analyzed in this paper intrinsic imperfectious in financial markets and the policy dilemmas they pose are reviewed first the stylized facts of southern cone experiments in financial liberization are then presented alternative ways of organlzing domestic capital markets under latin american conditions are discussed and an eclectic reform mongering program is proposed

financial development and economic growth abstract this paper examines the empirical relationship between long run growth and financial development proxied by the ratio between bank credit to the private sector and gdp we find that this proxy is positively correlated with growth in a large cross country sample but its impact changes across countries and is negative in a panel data for latin america we argue that the latter findings is the result of financial liberalization in a poor regulatory environment our findings also show that the main channel of transmission from financial development to growth is the efficiency rather than the volume of investment

branching scale economies and banking costs abstract in this paper we develop and estimate a model of bank costs based on a theory of the branch cost function first we show that convenient branch location is important to banking customers and implies that banks do not necessarily operate branches at minimum average cost this theoretical result provides a rationale for including branch variables in the bank cost function second we estimate a statistical cost equation derived explicitly from assumptions about the branch cost function and including branch output variables our empirical results suggest substantial economies of scale at the branch level but no economies from expansion by branching finally we show that the resulting cost structure of the banking industry does not imply that a highly concentrated banking structure is necessary for efficiency thus economies of scale would not be expected to force small banks out of the market even if current restrictions on interstate banking are liberalized

predation in off patent drug markets in 2009 sanofi aventis whose generic subsidiary is winthrop merges with the generic firm zentiva this article fills the gap in the theoretical literature concerning mergers in pharmaceutical markets to prevent generic firms from increasing their market share some brand name firms produce generics themselves called pseudo generics we develop a cournot duopoly model by considering the pseudo generics production as a mergers catalyst we show that a brand name company always has an incentive to purchase its competitor the key insight of this article is that the brand name laboratory can increase its merger gain by producing pseudo generics beforehand in some cases pseudo generics would not otherwise be produced and this production is then a predatory strategy

finance and inequality the case of india although theory emphasizes the role of financial market frictions in explaining income inequality there is little empirical research exploring how financial development and financial sector reforms influence the evolution of income inequality this article examines how finance impacts income inequality in india using annual time series data for over half a century the results indicate that while financial development helps reduce income inequality financial liberalization seems to exacerbate it the results are robust to the use of different measures for financial development and financial liberalization although the relationship between financial development and economic growth has been extensively studied in the literature see for example king and levine 1993 demetriades and hussein 1996 arestis and demetriades 1997 levine loayza and beck 2000 bell and rousseau 2001 ang and mckibbin 2007 little is known about how finance impacts income inequality the importance of the finance inequality relationship has recently been highlighted in an insightful survey article by claessens and perotti 2007 they indicate that while financial development can help reduce income inequality financial liberalization captured by established interests may do the opposite the theoretical predictions of the effects of finance on income inequality are controversial rajan and zingales 2003b argue that improvements in the formal financial sector primarily benefit the rich greenwood and jovanovic 1990 predict a nonlinear relationship between financial development and income inequality where it is hypothesized that income inequality first increases with the degree of sophistication in the financial systems then stabilizes and eventually declines others propose that the presence of financial market imperfections deters the poor from borrowing adequately to invest in human and physical capital implying that financial development helps alleviate income inequality banerjee and newman 1993 galor and zeira 1993 aghion and bolton 1997 mookherjee and ray 2003 2006 given that theories provide ambiguous predictions regarding the effects of finance on the distribution of income it is useful to approach the issue at the empirical level this could facilitate our understanding of the relationship between finance and inequality and help us to assess the validity of each theoretical model despite the important role of financial market frictions in the theories of poverty and income inequality researchers so far have not adequately addressed whether financial

non linear growth effects of financial development does financial integration matter using both macro and industry level data this paper analyses the non linear effects of financial development and international financial integration on economic growth in europe special attention is devoted to modeling threshold effects with respect to the depth of financial markets as a measure of economies absorption capacity results reveal evidence of significant non linear effects with less developed european countries gaining more from financial development in contrast benefits of international financial integration become significant at higher levels of financial development the data show that monetary integration in europe significantly contributed to a higher degree of financial integration entry of new eu members to the european monetary union may thus be the mechanism ensuring a virtuous development circle as the adoption of the euro may allow the development of domestic financial markets and financial integration to go hand in hand

waves of international banking integration a tale of regional differences abstract we propose an original measure of international banking integration based on gravity equations and a spline function on a panel of 14 countries and their 186 partners between 1999 and 2012 contrary to the conventional wisdom we uncover that 1 the international banking integration outside the euro area has been tenaciously increasing since 1999 and has even strengthened after the crisis 2 in contrast the international banking integration of the euro area has been cyclical since 1999 with a peak in 2006 and a complete reversal since then 3 this decline is not a correction of previous overshooting but a marked disintegration 4 outside the euro area the level of income does not affect the shape of banking integration

law and finance at the origin what are the key determinants of financial development and growth a large literature debates the relative importance of countries legal and political environment in this paper i present evidence from ancient rome where an early form of shareholder company the societas publicanorum developed i show that the societas publicano rum flourished in a legally underdeveloped but politically supportive environment roman republic and disappeared when roman law reached its height of legal sophistication but the political environment grew less supportive roman empire in the roman case legal development appears to have mattered little as long as the law as practiced was flexible and adapted to economic needs the law as practiced in turn reflected prevalent political interests after discussing parallels in more recent history i provide a brief overview of the literature on law and finance and on politics and finance the historical evidence suggests that legal systems may be less of a technological constraint for growth than previously thought at least at the origin

asymmetric international minimum quality standards and vertical differentiation this paper develops a two country model of a vertically differentiated duopoly that spans two countries which are not integrated without additional costs equilibrium qualities prices profits and consumer s surplus are compared when 1 minimum quality standards are identical and 2 standards differ across countries both markets turn out to be connected by the quality choices of the two firms both firms prices in the two countries and their profits are lower whereas consumer s surplus and the two offered qualities are higher in both countries if no firm is forced out of the country s market with the more demanding minimum quality standard copyright 1995 by blackwell publishing ltd

borrowing constraints human capital accumulation and growth abstract borrowing constraints increase aggregate savings and therefore may increase growth this paper argues however that by reducing human capital accumulation borrowing constraints also have negative effects on growth these effects are discussed in an overlapping generations model with endogenous growth empirical evidence for oecd and developing countries lend support to the main predictions of the model

minimum quality standards with more than two firms abstract this paper studies the effects of introducing a minimum quality standard mqs in a vertically differentiated market it is shown that previous results indicating beneficial effects of a mqs heavily depend on the duopolistic set up they had been developed in an example with three firms is then provided showing that not all reaction functions in quality levels are increasing we also show that the introduction of the standard decreases the profit levels of all firms the maximum quality level and the average quality consumed as a consequence despite the increase in consumer surplus any effective mqs would reduce welfare

competition and substitutability in the swedish pharmaceuticals market substitution possibilities between brand name pharmaceuticals are analysed the analysis is based on data from three different markets the prescription drug market for beta blocking agents the over the counter market for purgatives and the hospital market for two pharmaceutical treatments for gastric ulcers the results indicate that there exist some substitution possibilities among the brand name drugs included in the study

financial development and intersectoral allocation a new approach this paper uses a new methodology based on industry comovement to examine the role of financial market development in intersectoral allocation based on the assumption that there exist common global shocks to growth opportunities we hypothesize that country pairs should have correlated patterns of sectoral growth if they are able to respond to these shocks consistent with financial markets promoting responsiveness to shocks countries have more highly correlated growth rates across sectors when both countries have well developed financial markets this effect is stronger between country pairs at similar levels of economic development which are more likely to experience similar growth shocks copyright 2004 by the american finance association

policies to move from stabilization to growth although some discussions of stabilization see growth as more or less an assured product of appropriate stabilization this paper argues that there is no guarantee that stabilization will lead to growth it may result in stagnation the paper discusses the essentials of stabilization including inflation targets fiscal policy monetary policy exchange rates and incomes policy and suggests that two areas of structural reform deregulation including trade reform and reform of the financial sector can play a central role in the long run success of a stabilization effort the paper concludes that countries that have experienced protracted high inflation financial instability and payments crises probably will have a difficult and protracted transition to growth and that external resources will be necessary as a continuing feature of the transition sustained external support in the form of long term loans heavily conditioned on the tangibility and credibility of domestic progress in adjustment will help provide a bridge by which flight capital may return and foreign direct investment may be encouraged to take advantage of fresh opportunities

is the relationship between financial development and economic growth monotonic evidence from a sample of middle income countries summary we revisit the relationship between financial development and economic growth in a panel of 52 middle income countries over the 1980 2008 period using pooled mean group estimations in a dynamic heterogeneous panel setting we show that there is an inverted u shaped relationship between finance and growth in the long run in the short run the relationship is insignificant this suggests that too much finance can exert a negative influence on growth in middle income countries the finding of a non monotonic effect of financial development on growth is confirmed by estimating a threshold model

correspondent services and cost economies in commercial banking abstract prior bank cost function studies have ignored the fact that some banks obtain a substantial amount of services from their correspondents if these services are paid for with compensating deposit balances their cost to the purchasing bank is not reflected in standard expense reports this paper investigates whether explicit consideration of theese correspondent costs materially affects estimated bank returns to scale the results indicate that the level of banksoperating costs is underreported by as much as 15 while scale economy estimates for unit banks are not significantly affected by the addition of correspondent service costs prior studies have overestimated branch bank scale economies by a small but statistically significant amount

are financial development and trade openness complements or substitutes this article studies the long and short run relationships between financial development and trade openness using the pooled mean group estimator of pesaran shin and smith 1999 for unbalanced panel data for 87 countries over the 1960 2005 period our empirical results indicate that long run complementarity between financial development and trade openness coexists with short run substitutionarity between the two policy variables but when splitting the data into oecd and non oecd country groups this finding can be observed only in non oecd countries for oecd countries financial development has negligible effects on trade in addition we find nonlinearity in the relationship in that long run responses of trade decrease with financial development the article further finds coexistence of negative trade effects of financial fragility and positive trade impacts of financial depth

real interest rates and growth improving on some deflating experiences tests of the mckinnon shaw hypothesis typically investigate the relationship between real interest rates and growth recent work has concluded that this relationship may be non monotonic this article investigates the role of real interest rate mismeasurement in explaining these non monotonicities when such mismeasurement is systematically related to growth it will produced biased empirical results after addressing these biases the article demonstrates that financial liberalisation may offer substantial economic gains in an average country raising real interest rates from 25 per cent to five per cent will increase real annual per capita gdp growth from zero to a relatively robust rate of two per cent

commodity taxation in a differentiated oligopoly the authors introduce commodity taxation into a vertical differentiation model with endogenous product selection they show that a uniform ad valorem tax lowers both qualities distorts the allocation of consumers between firms and lowers the consumer prices of both variants a small uniform tax is always welfare improving over the no tax equilibrium a differentiation of tax rates may or may not be desirable on welfare grounds if a welfare improvement is possible through a nonuniform tax it is always the high quality variant that must be taxed at a higher rate copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

product line deregulation and the cost structure of us savings and loan associations recent legislative actions restrict thrift powers which were broadened by deregulatory actions in the early 1980s using nationwide data for savings and loans s ls evidence is found that these restrictions may rise intermediation costs for s ls by limiting their ability to exploit economies of scope between mortgage related and other outputs in addition economies of scale for a wide size range of s ls are found evidence is also found to suggest that insolvent s ls have higher costs for the same level of outputs than solvent s ls

business cycles and the relationship between concentration and price cost margins using a newly constructed panel data base we examine changes in price cost margins in 284 manufacturing industries between 1958 and 1981 a key finding is a dramatic narrowing of the spread between the margins of concentrated and unconcentrated industries over this period we provide evidence that this narrowing is a result of the greater sensitivity of price cost margins in more concentrated industries to demand fluctuations this finding is robust to the inclusion of other industry variables and to measures of import competition the results indicate that cross sectional estimates of the concentration margins relationship are likely to be both biased and misleading

financial crisis in southeast asia dispelling illusion the minskyan way this paper extends minsky s financial instability hypothesis to the case of the open liberalised economy making it possible to put forward a specifically minskyan account of the road to the financial crisis in southeast asia 1997 1998 the analysis suggests that the threats to growth and employment emanating from the financial sector which minsky identified in the closed economy setting are much intensified in open liberalised developing economies financial liberalisation is an important key factor in this process rival explanations of the crisis are examined and rejected in favour of the extended minskyan explanation the policy implications are derived and discussed copyright 2002 oxford university press

trade policy and quality leadership in transition economies trade policy and quality leadership in transition economies are analyzed in a duopoly model of trade and vertical product differentiation we first show that the incidence of trade liberalization is sensitive to whether firms in transition economies are producers of low or high quality second we find that neither free trade nor the absence of a domestic subsidy are optimal both a tariff and a subsidy increase price competition and while the former extracts foreign rents the latter results in quality upgrading third there exists a rationale for a government to commit to a socially optimal policy to induce quality leadership by the domestic firm when cost asymmetries are low finally we establish an equivalence result between the effects of long run exchange rate changes and those of trade policy on price competition but not on social welfare

financial markets in development and the development of financial markets what is the relationship between markets and development it is argued that markets promote growth and that growth in turn encourages the formation of markets two models with endogenous market formation are presented to analyze this issue the first examines the role that financial markets banks and stock markets play in allocating funds to the highest valued use in the economic system it is shown that intermediation will arise under weak conditions the second focuses on the role that markets play in supporting specialization in economic activity the consequences of perfect competition in market formation are highlighted

entry deterrence and mergers under price competition in pharmaceutical markets after patent expirations in pharmaceutical markets brand name laboratories are threatened by generic firms entry to fill the gap in the theoretical literature on this topic we study brand name firms incentives either to deter entry or to merge with the entrant these strategies are considered along with the possibility of the brand name firm producing its own generic drug called a pseudo generic drug using a vertical differentiation model with bertrand stackelberg competition we show that each strategy merging and deterring entry may be nash equilibrium according to the generic firm s setup cost level and to the rate of discount

the political economy of the pharmaceutical industry e conomicsis a practical science since its inception as an independent discipline it has probed the major policy issues of the day the topics that aroused the interests of its practitioners have generally been those that presented government officials with critical choices the modern literature on the economics of the pharmaceutical industry is no exception this body of material originated with the investigations of the kefauver committee in late 1959 public interest was aroused by the spectacle of confrontation between committee and industry the record made by this committee and its successors grew to tens of thousands of pages as claims and counterclaims were offered regarding industry conduct and performance the primary line of attack concerned pharmaceutical prices and profits the committee demonstrated that prices generally exceeded direct costs of manufacturing for 22 major pharmaceutical firms in 1958 costs of goods sold were merely 32 percent of total sales u s senate report 1961 p 31 the committee argued that this fact alone demonstrated the presence of monopoly power while the substantial difference between revenues and production costs permitted high expenditures on research and development it also paid for even higher selling outlays moreover reported rates of return after taxes during this period on the order of 21 to 22 percent exceeded twice the average for all manufacturing the industry replied that on the contrary prices were low relative to the value afforded consumers and high returns on successful products were required to balance the losses from the large numbers of unsuccessful ones the relevant concept of marginal costs according to the industry position must include the costs of developing and marketing new products and therefore prices were not excessive at all although it admitted earning substantial profits the industry argued that without these returns research outlays would be limited and the number of new drugs reduced the committee countered that little of social value arose from industry research molecules were manipulated and the new drugs that resulted were therapeutically similar to those already on the market indeed it suggested that much