The Asset Management Industry in Asia: Dynamics of Growth,Structure, and Performance

We examine the industrial organization and institutional development of the asset management industry in Asian developing economies—specifically in China, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, and Thailand. We focus on the size and growth of the buy‐side of the respective financial markets, asset allocation, the regulatory environment, and the state of internationalization of the fund management industry in its key components—mutual funds, pension funds, and asset management for high net worth individuals. We link the evolution of professional asset management in these environments to the development of the respective capital markets and to the evolution of corporate governance. We find that the fund management industry occupies a very small niche in domestic financial systems that are dominated by banks. At the same time, we find that its growth has been very rapid in the early 2000s and we suggest that this is likely to persist as the demand for professional management of financial wealth in the region develops and as the pension fund sectors of the respective economies are liberalized to allow larger portions of assets to be invested in collective investment schemes.     

Regulating Banking beyond National Boundaries

THE REGULATION OF INTERNATIONAL BANKING, by Richard Dale ECONOMIC FORECASTING AND POLICY: THE INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION, by John Llewellyn, Stephen Potter and Lee Samuelson     

Explaining the size differences of exporter premia: theory and evidence

Two decades of research have established pronounced exporter productivity premia (EPP) and exporter size premia (ESP). Yet, we do not know why such exporter premia differ so widely in magnitude across countries or sectors? We take this question to the theory and to the data. We derive the sectoral EPP and ESP in a standard heterogeneous firms trade model and apply the insights from the model to guide our empirical investigation of detailed Danish firm-level data. We show that a significant share of the observed variation in EPP and ESP across sectors can be accounted for by sector differences in the underlying variation in productivity dispersion, variable trade costs, the ratio of fixed export costs to fixed costs of production, and the elasticity of demand.     

The Evolution of Private Equity Fund Terms Beyond 2 and 20

With the remarkable increases in the assets under management of private equity firms, the standard compensation arrangement of a 2% management fee plus 20% carried interest has raised concerns of a misalignment of interests between limited partners (LPs) and general partners (GPs). Using a proprietary data set that includes detailed fund terms of 210 PE buyout funds with vintage years between 1989 and 2012, the authors summarize the findings of their recent study of the evolution of fund terms. The authors report that PE fund terms have been remarkable mainly for their resistance to change, and that the only important force for bringing about reductions in percentage management fees has been the recent increase in fund sizes. But the modest cuts in management fees that have accompanied the increase in fund sizes have done little to address what appears to be a conflict of interest between LPs and GPs over the optimal PE fund size. As one possible solution to this conflict, the authors analyze a recent innovation by Bain Capital that involves considerably smaller management fees (say, 1%) and larger carried interest (as high as 30%). According to the authors, such terms have a good chance of becoming the new industry standard for two reasons: First, LPs have become increasingly “professionalized,” which has led to greater focus on GP compensation and ways of realigning their interests with LPs'. Second, the “signaling” benefits for those GPs willing to distinguish themselves by offering terms like “1 and 30” could encourage more GPs to move in this direction. In the authors' words, “For all but the most reputable and established PE firms, those GPs that do not offer the new terms may well be seen as signaling little confidence in their ability to do what they're being paid to do: namely, produce above‐market returns.”     

How to price the unbundled local loop in the transition from copper to fiber access networks?

In many countries worldwide access networks are in the transition from copper to fiber access. During the transition phase copper and fiber networks are operated in parallel. All regulators facing this situation of technological change have to decide how to price unbundled access to the copper loop in this transition phase. Should they keep the usual forward looking long-run incremental cost standard charge, or should they move to some different approach? The authors propose to price copper access based on the modern equivalent asset (MEA) of fiber access. Since fiber access is superior to copper access, the cost of fiber access (as a basis for pricing copper access) should, however, be corrected by the performance delta between copper and fiber access.     

Improving the business impact of foresight

Achieving an impact on business decision-makers with foresight does not appear to be an easy task. Therefore, the Macro Trends team at Deutsche Bank Research has formulated some criteria to guide foresight projects. They should aim to produce plausibility, provide convenience and inspiration as well as an appropriate time perspective with regard to the content of foresight results. In addition, a structured way of producing and delivering foresight, a seamless inclusion in organisational procedures, a high level of interaction with decision-makers, ideational entrepreneurship, innovation regarding communication with business people, and persistence and synchronisation with the business organisation are the key criteria for achieving a higher impact from foresight projects. To live up to these criteria, the Macro Trends team has developed a 'trend map' which provides a conceptual aggregation of trends - to provide orientation for decision-makers and stakeholders.     

International trade and resource diversion: The case of environmental management

Zusammenfassung Au\enhandel und Umlenkung von Ressourcen: Der Fall des Umweltmanagements. — Umweltmanagement wird in dieser Arbeit als eine durch die Verschiebung der Pr?ferenzen hervorgerufene gesellschaftliche Umlenkung der Ressourcen von der Produktion von handelbaren zu nichthandelbaren Gütern behandelt. Unterstrichen wird die Bedeutung a. der Assimilationskapazit?t der Umwelt als Angebotsfaktor, der den Au\enhandel direkt (durch die Beeinflussung der komparativen Vorteile) und indirekt (durch das Errichten von Umweltschwellen und durch die erforderliche Umlenkung der Ressourcen) mitdeterminiert und b. der Umweltnachfragefunktionen als Determinanten der Anstrengungen bezüglich des Umweltmanagements. Die Implikationen der internationalen Unterschiede für den Au\enhandel werden für beide Funktionen aufgezeigt, und zwar sowohl allgemein als auch speziell in bezug auf die ?factor-endowment?-Theorie. Es wird gezeigt, da\ langfristige Auswirkungen auf internationale komparative Vorteile erwartet werden k?nnen, auch dann, wenn alle L?nder identische Normen bezüglich der Umweltqualit?t aufstellen sollten.

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Résumé L’échange international et la diversion des ressources: Le cas d’une gestion de l:nvironnement. — La gestion de l:nvironnement est considérée dans cet article comme une diversion sociale des ressources de la production des biens échangeables à celle des biens non échangeables, causée par un changement de préférences. L’auteur accentue l’importance de deux points: (1) La capacité assimilative de l:nvironnement comme un élément de l’offre détermine l’échange international d’une manière directe en exer?ant une influence sur les avantages comparatifs et d’une manière indirecte en établissant des seuils au-dessus de lesquels la qualité de l:nvironnement diminue de plus en plus et exige une diversion des ressources. (2) Les fonctions de demande de qualité de l:nvironnement déterminent des efforts pour contr?ler l’environnement. Les implications pour l’échange international à cause des variations internationales dans les deux fonctions sont esquissées en général et particulièrement à l’égard de la théorie de dotation en facteurs de production. Il est indiqué que des effects à long terme sur l’avantage comparatif peuvent être attendus, même dans le cas oú tous les pays adoptent des normes identiques pour contr?ler la qualité de l’nvironnement.

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Resumen Comercio internacional y desviación de recursos: El caso del manejo del medio ambiente.— En este trabajo se trata al manejo del medio ambiente como una desviaci?n que la sociedad ocasiona en los recursos para la producción comerciable hacia la producción no comerciable, en respuesta a los cambios en las preferencias. Se enfatiza la importancia: (a) de la capacidad de asimilación del medio ambiente como factor de oferta que entra a determinar el comercio tanto directamente (afectando las ventajas comparativas) como indirectamente (estableciendo limites medio-ambientales y requerimientos de desviación de recursos) y, (b) de las funciones de demanda medio-ambientales como déterminantes de los esfuerzos para el control del medio ambiente. Se delinean las implicaciones comerciales de las variaciones internacionales en ambas funciones, en general y en particular referencia a la teorfa corriente de la dotaci?n de recursos. Se indica, que los efectos de largo plazo sobre las ventajas comparativas internacionales se pueden anticipar, incluso si todos los paises adoptan idénticas normas para determinar la calidad medioambiental.