Bank Competition and its Determinants: Evidence from Indian Banking

Abstract

This paper measures the degree of bank competition in India using a sample of 70 commercial banks over the period 1996–2016. To assess the degree of competition, we estimate the market power of each bank in our sample employing three nonstructural measures: the Lerner index, the adjusted Lerner index, and the Boone indicator. Bank-wise and year-wise estimates of the marginal cost required in all these measures are obtained using the semi-parametric method. The paper further attempts to undertake a comprehensive assessment of competition in Indian banking and identifies various bank-specific, macroeconomic, structural, and contestability indicators, which are supposed to explain level and variation of the degree of competition over time. Empirical findings reveal that public-sector banks in India exercise a relatively higher degree of bank competition compared to private and foreign-sector banks. However, aggregate results support that the Indian banking system is competitive in general. Unlike the structure-conduct-performance paradigm, which advocates that a concentrated banking system impairs competitiveness, our findings reveal that concentration measures hardly exert any effect on bank competition. Rather, contestability measures play a significant role in the determination of bank competition.     

Involuntary excess reserve and bankers’ remuneration: evidence from Chinese banks

This article analyses the effects of involuntary excess reserves (IER) on bankers’ remuneration and the penalty associated with bank risk-taking if discovered. The study finds that IER help conceal tail risks, improves bankers’ performance and remuneration. However, the risks once discovered result in heavy penalties on bankers’ remuneration. The study extends the agency theory to the context where banks hold large IER.     

地理邻近与知识产权——基于中国1 331项新能源技术发明专利的实证研究

虽然远程交流技术快速发展，但现有研究表明专利发明在很大程度上仍依赖于信息的地理邻近。以中国1992-2009年的1 331个新能源发明专利为研究对象，运用Jung Wonn,Jaffe等的实验设计方法，研究了专利引证的地理邻近是否会随时间递进而增大。结果表明，个人、大学、公司及其它种类发明专利引证的地理邻近会随着时间变化而增大，而政府受到的影响较小。另外，由于区域城市分属不同省份，因此并不能证明区域专利引证的地理邻近也会随着时间变化而增大。     

Estimating effects of cooperative membership on farmers’ safe production behaviors: Evidence from pig sector in China

This research studies the determinants of pig farmers’ participation in farmers’ cooperatives and the effects of farmers’ cooperatives on pig farmers’ behaviors in adopting safe production practices using data from a household survey of 540 cooperative farmers and 270 non-cooperative farmers from four main pig production provinces in China. The propensity score matching (PSM) method was adopted to deal with possible self-selection bias associated with farmers’ participation in farmers’ cooperatives due to observables, which is further supplemented by a sensitivity analysis to assess the degree to which the PSM results are robust to the presence of unobservables. The PSM results show that the cooperative membership has significant and positive influence on farmers’ propensity to adopt safe production practices and the effects are heterogeneous across a number of key cooperative, farm and household attributes. Specifically, the membership effects tend to be bigger for cooperatives led by Investor-owned firms (IOFs) and farms of small production scale. And the effects tend to be greater for households (1) of medium and high level of education, (2) of less than 10 years of pig production experience, (3) of no off-farm job experience, and (4) that are specialized in pig production. The sensitivity analysis further increases our confidence in the results for the feed use and the breed use, however, the results for vaccination, drug use and waste disposable are more sensitive to the influence of unobservables, therefore should be interpreted with caution.     

Consumers’ valuation for food traceability in China: Does trust matter?

Food safety is a very important topic in China. We investigate Chinese consumers’ preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for food traceability using a choice experiment. Given that consumers’ trust in the food system may affect their preferences and WTP, we also assess the interaction between consumers’ trust in government’s supervision of food safety and food labels and consumers’ preferences for traceable food products. Using data collected from a choice experiment on Fuji apples in a face-to-face survey in six Chinese cities, the results show that (i) consumers are willing to pay for traceable food but their valuations can differ upon the degree of their trust in government’s supervision of food safety and food labels; (ii) consumers are willing to pay for traceability with strong evidence of preference heterogeneity; (iii) government is not the most trusted safety inspection and certificate authority as found in prior studies using animal food products in China.     

What Makes Firms Competitive? States,Markets, and Organisational Embeddedness in Competitive Firm Restructuring in Postsocialist Economies

The prevailing transitions literature suggests that dynamic firms in postsocialist economies are the result of macroinstitutional reforms leading to the making of markets. This article builds on work in comparative political economy and economic sociology to show that the degree of competitive behaviour of postsocialist firms is determined not by the existence of general market institutions alone but by the kinds of organisational allies firms possess and the kinds of markets they compete in. Using firm survey data across 28 postsocialist economies, the article examines the determinants of competitive restructuring by firms, including product innovation, standards upgrade, financial transparency, and investments in research and development. The article confirms insights from comparative political economy which suggest that dynamic enterprise sectors emerge when governance is effective. However, at the firm level, the article finds that transnational ties and supportive policy environments are most significant in the making of dynamic postsocialist enterprises. The article also highlights important regional variation in firm behaviour and discusses the relationship between institutional frameworks, organisational embeddedness, and firm restructuring in postsocialist economies.     

The price of fear: Estimating the financial cost of bullying and harassment to the NHS in England

Using a spectrum of measures, this paper estimates some of the financial costs of bullying and harassment to the NHS in England. By means of specific impacts resulting from bullying and harassment to staff health, sickness absence costs to the employer, employee turnover, diminished productivity, sickness presenteeism, compensation, litigation and industrial relations costs, we conservatively estimate bullying and harassment to cost the taxpayer £2.281 billion per annum.     

Are Chinese nationals’ attitudes to wildlife tourist attractions different from those of other nationalities?

Many wildlife tourist attractions (WTAs) have negative impacts on animal welfare and species conservation. In the absence of regulation, raising standards requires tourists to create market pressure by choosing to attend WTAs with benefits for wildlife. We surveyed respondents from five countries – China, Australia, Canada, UK, and USA – to quantify how attitudes to captive animals, and towards WTAs’ outputs and standards, may vary with nationality. Our aim was to provide a firm basis for behaviour change interventions to alter current patterns of tourist consumption of WTAs. All respondents agreed on the importance of conservation and animal welfare, but Chinese respondents were twice as likely to believe that WTAs would not be allowed to exist if they were bad for animals, and that WTAs’ promotional materials were reliable indicators of welfare and conservation standards. These findings indicate Chinese respondents had fundamentally similar attitudes to those from the other countries, but differed in how those attitudes were likely to be applied. Chinese tourists may experience more barriers to aligning their actions with their values with respect to WTAs. Removing these barriers may require information campaigns to highlight the lack of regulation, and the unreliability of some WTAs’ promotional materials and tourists’ reviews.     

Inequality and entrepreneurial thresholds

We explore the relationship between inequality and entrepreneurial activity. Drawing on cross-sectional data from a largescale survey of the economic conditions of individuals across India, we develop a number of dimensions of inequality to explore empirically how inequality interacts with entrepreneurship, operationalized as self-employment or as employing other people. We find compelling evidence that there are thresholds to becoming self-employed, and even more so to assembling the combinations of resources and personal attributes required to become an employer. Greater inequality leaves more people unable to make the transition to self-employment, leaving casual laboring as the occupation of necessity. At the same time, inequality increases the number of employers in a society, by concentrating resources - particularly land and finance - enough for significant numbers of people to be able to cross this higher threshold. Lastly, greater differentiation into social or religious groups curtails the ability to cross either entrepreneurial threshold, presumably by limiting the extent and benefits of social networks of value for entrepreneurship.     

Demystifying residents' walking behaviors: Active transport in South East Queensland,Australia

This study investigates the correlates of a resident's walking behaviors and aims to shed light on mechanisms through which walking may be encouraged. The results of this investigation paint a complex and nuanced picture of the residents’ walking behaviors in South East Queensland, Australia. The results suggest that sociodemographic characteristics separately may contribute greatly to whether or not one engages in walking behaviors. Further, cumulatively these differences might be greater for some groups of residents compared to others. One of the most prominent findings of the study is that the purpose, the characteristics of the origin, and the characteristics of the destination of a trip tended to be similar in the heterogeneity they exhibit over the distribution of time spent walking. For example, pick something up, undertake work, or engage in personal business, move to or from a workplace, shop, or social place are activities that tend to be associated with walking as a main mode of transport and a higher number of walking episodes. However, these trips tended to be short.