The Single Market and Geographic Concentration in Europe

The stylized fact that regional concentration is lower in Europe than in the USA has led to the prediction that the creation of the Single Market might increase spatial concentration in Europe. This has raised some fears that the social and political burden of rapid change might counterbalance the economic gains, that the core might win to the detriment of the periphery, and that concentration of industry might make countries more vulnerable to asymmetric shocks in the Monetary Union. This paper uses a new disaggregated dataset to substantiate whether spatial concentration increased during the 1990s. Most other studies have not extended beyond the early 1990s or have used less comprehensive and detailed datasets. The main result is that geographic concentration did not increase, but rather decreased during the 1990s. Industrial patterns of geographic concentration and its dynamics partly conformed to the hypotheses provided by economic geography, trade theory, and industrial organization.     

美欧煤炭期货市场发展研究

文章以美欧上市煤炭期货前后背景为出发点,分析美国和欧洲上市煤炭期货前后的经济环境、煤炭市场供需情况以及上市后的市场运行情况等,并对美欧煤炭期货市场进行对比分析,引出现代期货市场已经具有为生产者、经营者、消费者甚至投机者在内的一种市场导向功能,特别是生产导向功能方面表现最为明显。     

The European Single Currency and MENA's Exports to Europe

The paper investigates future exchange rate policy of the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries vis‐à‐vis the euro aimed at fostering their manufactured exports towards Euroland. The exchange rate policy is captured through three different indicators: the real effective exchange rate changes, volatility, and misalignment. The investigation is conducted for 11 sectors over the period 1970–1997. The sample includes four North African countries (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt) and Turkey. The results show that exchange rate management plays a crucial role in providing incentives for manufactured exports toward Euroland. The food sector is weakly responsive to real exchange rate changes while the textile sector is highly responsive. Four growing sectors (electronic, electrical, mechanical, and vehicles) were also found to be highly sensitive to exchange rate changes. The results suggest that policymakers should be more concerned with misalignment than with volatility.     

Market competition and firms' social performance

This paper investigates whether market competition encourages firms to be more socially responsible. We find that firms in more competitive markets exhibit better overall social performance, as measured by doing well (“strength”) and doing badly (“concern”) in areas such as community, environment, human rights, and treatment of employees. To deal with endogeneity, we instrument market competition on entry barrier and observe that market competition only significantly reduces social concerns but not increases social strengths. Thus, firms are more reactive in reducing social concerns than proactive in augmenting their social strengths. Amongst these concerns, firms appear to be more active in reducing environmental concerns. The paper underscores the limitations in relying on the “invisible hand” of the market to deal with the multi-dimensional challenges of firms’ social performance.     

Market competition and the distributional consequences of mobile phones in Canada

The aim of this paper is to better understand how competition based telecommunication policies function as a mediating variable in the distribution of socio-economic consequences of mobile phones using the case of Canada. Many observers characterize the Canadian market as being uncompetitive, and argue that this lack of competition has affected Canadians in terms of access. Thus, even though almost all Canadians have access to land-line services, mobile phone penetration is still relatively low. This could be relevant as mobile services are more likely to include data and other advanced applications. As it is, access is influenced by age, income, and education. Gender is also relevant particularly with the use of more advanced devices and services. The urban and rural divide is of concern particularly where remote communities can benefit from having mobile phones. In addition, the lack of effective competition can negatively affect the competitiveness of domestic businesses relative to foreign competitors. One of the implications of the Canadian policy towards mobile phones is that while its approach was to limit regulation (regulatory forbearance) in order to develop competitive markets, those markets did not necessarily emerge. Regulatory forbearance thus contributed to a particular pattern of distributional consequences. This article argues that competition needs to be aligned with the overall goals of telecommunications policy. To do this, a country needs to define not what degree of competition is required but rather under what circumstances government intervention is needed. It might be satisfactory to have only few players in one national context but not in another. Defining the scope of intervention is perhaps most related to the tasks of identifying benefits and costs of access and how these are distributed.     

Agglomeration effects in Europe

The paper estimates agglomeration effects for France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK. Estimation takes into account endogeneity of the spatial distribution of employment and spatial fixed effects. Empirical results suggest that agglomeration effects in these European countries are only slightly smaller than agglomeration effects in the US: the estimated elasticity of (average) labor productivity with respect to employment density is 4.5 percent compared to 5 percent in the US.     

The informational effects of competition and collusion in legislative politics

We use a mechanism design approach to study the organization of interest groups in an informational model of lobbying. Interest groups influence the legislature only by communicating private information on their preferences and not by means of monetary transfers. Interest groups have private information on their ideal points in a one-dimensional policy space and may either compete or adopt more collusive behaviors. Optimal policies result from a trade-off between imposing rules which are non-responsive to the groups' preferences and flexibility that pleases groups better. Within a strong coalition, interest groups credibly share information which facilitates communication of their joint interests, helps screening by the legislature and induces flexible policies responsive to the groups' joint interests (an informativeness effect). Competing interest groups better transmit information on their individual preferences (a screening effect). The socially and privately optimal organization of lobbying favors competition between groups only when their preferences are not too congruent with those of the legislature. With more congruence, a strong coalition is preferred. Finally, within a weak coalition, interest groups must design incentive compatible collusive mechanisms to share information. Such weak coalitions are always inefficient.     

Environmental problems and policy in the Single European Market

The paper analyzes the direct and indirect environmental impacts of the completion of the Single European Market, both internally and with respect to the Rest of the World. Moreover, the principles of environmental policy are described. The main conclusion is that if the European Community and the member states develop effective and efficient policy instruments the positive effects of the completion of the Single Market could substantially outweigh the negative impacts.     

Market concentration and competition in OECD mobile telecommunications markets

This study analyses the progress of market concentration in OECD member states’ mobile telecommunications markets and evaluates the relationship between market concentration and performance. Using annual panel data from 24 OECD member states for the 1998–2011 period, the study estimates regression equations for market concentration, mobile prices and profits. The empirical results indicate that the more concentrated the mobile market, the higher the prices and profits, providing support for the market power hypothesis. If this hypothesis holds, then market concentration can be a useful indicator of market performance. On the other hand, the applicability of the hypothesis is unclear for the second half of the sample period. The results provide evidence that regulatory policies influence the structure and performance of mobile markets.     

The effects of public expenditures on labour productivity in Europe

Empirica - In this paper, we analyse the effects of public expenditures and their structure on productivity growth in industry and services in the European Union (EU) countries (1996–2017)....     

Which Single Currency for Western Europe?

The Maastricht Treaty calls for a single European money in the third and final stage of European monetary integration. The purpose of this paper is to infer the preferred currency from the point of view of economic agents in each EMS country by ranking the realized distributions of returns from holding foreign currencies. These rankings are obtained using the notion of generalized stochastic dominance. The preferred currency varies with time and the portfolio considered. In all cases, the ECU is not supported as a likely dominant money.     

The effects of labour unions on international capital tax competition

Abstract We analyze the impact of labour market rigidities on tax competition between two imperfectly integrated countries. Following a shift from a competitive to a unionized labour market in both countries, the capital tax can be adjusted upward in the country with the less rigid labour market, whereas the capital tax is always adjusted downward in the other country. Moreover, by reducing the labour cost differential between countries, trade liberalization gives rise to tax and welfare convergences. Finally, when a country adopts a flexible labour market, the unionized country may attract the majority of capital.     

Market competition,lobbying influence and environmental externalities

In this paper, we contribute to the debate regarding the relationship between lobbying and environmental regulation by explicitly taking into account the role of market competition. We analyse how the number of firms affects both the effectiveness of lobbying in fighting environmental regulation and the individual incentive for firms to switch to green technology. To explore this issue, we present a Cournot oligopoly where firms can choose between abating the environmental externality or lobbying the government to hold a loose regulation. We investigate two alternative government's political objectives. In the first, government aims to only minimise the externality, while in the second, it also cares about the consumers surplus. We find that, in both cases, the higher the number of firms, the higher the incentive to abate. However, while in the first case, either both types of firms coexist or all firms switch to be green, in the other case, there exists a minimum the number of firms below which all firms remain polluting.     

Market competition, social welfare in an entry-constrained differentiated-good oligopoly

This paper studies a differentiated-good oligopoly where the socially optimal number of firms (varieties) may be smaller or greater than under the free-entry equilibrium. We show that, under certain conditions, social welfare may be higher when entry is restricted into the industry.     

Low-wage import competition,inflationary pressure,and industry dynamics in Europe

Have exogenous changes in import competition from low-wage countries (LWCs) brought about changes in inflationary pressure in Europe? This paper examines whether labor-intensive exports from Asia and other global regions have a uniform impact on producer prices in Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. In a panel covering 110 (4-digit) NACE industries from 1995 to 2008, instrumental variable estimations document that LWC import competition is associated with strong price effects. More specifically, when Chinese and other Asian LWC exporters capture 1% of a European market, producer prices decrease by about 3%. Next, decomposing the mechanisms that underlie the LWC price effect on European industry, we show that import competition has a pronounced effect on average productivity and only a muted effect on wages. Owing to the exit of firms and the increase in productivity, LWC import competition is shown to have substantially reduced employment in the European manufacturing sector.     

Negative effects of competition in a medical-service market

A market for medical care is characterized by uncertain, but inelastic demand and a ‘soft budget constraint’. We assume that in such a market, government decides on giving licenses to different private institutions to provide medical service. In this paper we present an argument as to why competition has a negative effect on social welfare and therefore government should only provide one license. We also explain why in such a market the profit-maximizing institutions install too high a capacity in comparison to a social optimum.     

Inter-linkages between competition and stabilisation policies in the banking sector and stock market development in Europe

The banking sector and the stock market in Europe have been adversely impacted by a series of global financial crises over the last two decades. Major financial reforms were implemented to enhance the stability and competition within the banking sector. Measures were also implemented to create a vibrant stock market in Europe to stimulate economic growth in Europe. This study examines the interactions between stock market development, banking competition, and banking stability in European countries from 1996 to 2016. The purpose of the study is to understand the inter-linkages between these variables to ascertain the spillover impact of policy reforms in the banking sector on the stock market and vice-versa. Using a vector error-correction model, the study finds long-run and short-run inter-linkages between banking competition, banking stability, and stock market development in European countries. The study’s most robust result is that banking competition and banking stability stimulate stock market development in the long run. There is also some evidence that healthy competition in the banking sector and stock market development instils greater stability in the banking sector. The results suggest that policy measures put in place to create a vibrant stock market must include elevating banking competition and banking stability, with policymakers being cognizant that causality may be bidirectional.