Competition Policy: What are the Costs and Benefits of Measuring its Costs and Benefits?

Summary  Competition authorities are increasingly measuring the effects of their enforcement actions, seeking a robust justification for the proliferation of competition policy. We highlight the importance of identifying the right counterfactual against which to measure effects, and set out the relevant categories of costs and benefits. We then explore how a balance can be struck between the benefits and inherent limitations of these measurement exercises. Relatively crude analyses of cartel action benefits can be sufficient to achieve public legitimacy for competition policy. Assessing the effects of merger and conduct inquiries is often ambiguous, but could be used to improve decision-making processes. Director and Managing Consultant, respectively, at Oxera, Oxford and London. The valuable comments of Fod Barnes, Kerry Hughes and an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors alone.     

Determinants of Current Account Imbalances in 16 OECD Countries: An Out-Of-Sample Perspective

We employ panel data as well as country-specific models to uncover empirically the determinants of current account imbalances. We find evidence of slope heterogeneity likely rendering the fixed-effect estimator inconsistent. Mean group estimation is followed to overcome the latter difficulty. Both estimation techniques are evaluated by means of in- and out-of-sample criteria. The mean group estimator outperforms the fixed-effect approach and, moreover, only three economic variables are found to impact on the current account balance significantly. These are the government budget balance, the domestic output gap and the changes of the terms of trade. We finally propose a parsimonious dynamic model of the current account, including only these variables and illustrate that it has similar predictive accuracy as country-specific benchmark models. JEL no. F32, C23, C53     

Tourism as an alternative source of regional growth in Portugal: a panel data analysis at NUTS II and III levels

The role of tourism is of vital economic importance, particularly for small countries with a privileged geographical location and favourable weather conditions. This paper examines the importance of tourism as a conditioning factor for higher regional growth in Portugal by employing the conditional convergence hypothesis of Barro and Sala-i-Martin, associated with the endogenous growth theory. The panel data estimation approach provides evidence of the positive impact of tourism (through the accommodation capacity) on the growth in per-capita income among the Portuguese regions, increasing the rate of convergence. Therefore, tourism can be considered as an alternative source for stimulating higher regional growth in Portugal, if the supply characteristics of this sector are improved.     

A market model of analysts’ opinions to explain changes in the dispersion of opinions

The demand for and supply of analysts’ opinions in this model yield an equilibrium that demonstrates how the information content of the opinions reacts to changes in exogenous parameters. The model also shows how changes in the parameters make analysts’ opinions more or less dispersed; for example, a decline in investor risk aversion, a decrease in market volatility, and an increase in information costs can lead to analysts’ opinions becoming more similar. Recognizing how exogenous factors can affect the supply and demand of analysts’ opinions gives additional insights into questions concerning what may appear to be herd behavior by analysts and also the relationship between forecast dispersion and information content. (JEL: G29, C71)     

EFFECT OF FED POLICY ACTIONS ON THE DEFAULT LIKELIHOOD OF COMMERCIAL BANKS

Using a measure of default likelihood based on an option pricing method, we provide evidence that Fed policy actions affect the financial distress of commercial banks. When the Fed increases (decreases) interest rates, the measure of default likelihood increases (decreases). We show that when the Fed uses a tight money policy, the increase in default likelihood is more pronounced for banks that have less capital, have greater financial leverage, are smaller, have fewer growth opportunities, and have lower asset quality. Additionally, the effects on bank default likelihood are more pronounced when the Fed's policy signals less concern about economic growth, as indicated by its bias toward further tightening, and when there is a market expectation of higher short‐term market rates in the future.     

Immobiliencontrolling — Optimierung der immobilienbezogenen Kosten durch Gründung einer Generalmietgesellschaft

Ohne Zusammenfassung Dipl.-Ing. (univ.) Michael Belau ist Director und Head of Rental Management Dipl.-Wirtschaftsing. (FH) Michael Schildger ist Vice President und Head of Finance Dr. Verena Sturm ist Manager Corporate Real Estate Services     

Mining and Social Movements: Struggles Over Livelihood and Rural Territorial Development in the Andes

Social movements have been viewed as vehicles through which the concerns of poor and marginalized groups are given greater visibility within civil society, lauded for being the means to achieve local empowerment and citizen activism, and seen as essential in holding the state to account and constituting a grassroots mechanism for promoting democracy. However, within development studies little attention has been paid to understanding how social movements can affect trajectories of development and rural livelihood in given spaces, and how these effects are related to movements’ internal dynamics and their interaction with the broader environment within which they operate. This paper addresses this theme for the case of social movements protesting contemporary forms of mining investment in Latin America. On the basis of cases from Peru and Ecuador, the paper argues that the presence and nature of social movements has significant influences both on forms taken by extractive industries (in this case mining) and on the effects of this extraction on rural livelihoods. In this sense, one can usefully talk about rural development as being co-produced by movements, mining companies, and other actors, in particular the state. The terms of this co-production, however, vary greatly among different locations, reflecting the distinct geographies of social mobilization and of mineral investment, as well as the varying power relationships among the different actors involved.