希腊国债危机对欧洲银行业信息披露的动态影响

本文探讨了希腊国债危机对银行信息披露的动态影响。经过对173家欧洲银行2009和2011年年度报告的数据统计,分析显示:自危机爆发以来,欧洲银行增加了其年度报告的长度,尤其是年度报告中的风险管理部分的长度。经过实证分析还发现,不管是银行的年度报告还是其风险管理报告长度的增加都与银行的资本成本所受到的外源性冲击相联系。而这种对资本成本的外源性冲击主要是希腊危机引起的。最后研究还发现,2011年风险管理报告部分的增加在一定程度上缓解了之前银行资本成本所收到的冲击,而年度报告的增加与此没有明显的关联。     

俄罗斯、捷克、匈牙利三国不同类型保险公司考察报告

近期,中国人寿集团考察团赴俄罗斯、捷克、匈牙利三国保险市场进行考察,考察团访问了当地市场上5家不同类型、各具特色的保险公司。考察团就集团管控、合规监察、资源整合、品牌宣传、应对危机等方面的内容与5家保险机构进行了广泛而深入的交流。通过此次考察,我们对俄罗斯及东欧保险市场有了进一步的认识,对该地区不同类型保险机构在上述经营方面的经验有了比较深入的了解和掌握。考察团结合我国保险集团化建设的实际情况,借鉴考察所获得的经验,针对我国保险集团化发展提出了相关建议。     

Regulation of international roaming in the European Union—Lessons learned

This paper analyzes the evolution of prices and competition in intra-EU international roaming markets. It addresses three main research questions: (i) to what extent have market forces by themselves brought competition to retail roaming markets? (ii) Has the evolution of market dynamics in wholesale roaming improved competition? (iii) Is wholesale regulation sufficient to lead to a reduction in retail roaming prices? Data show that there has been little price-based competition both at wholesale and retail levels, despite prices being well above costs and the significant margins allowed by regulation. Available data from the period preceding the entry into force of the first EU roaming regulation also point to the same conclusion. Lack of competitive pressure in retail roaming markets and inelastic demand give little incentives for retail roaming service providers to lower prices. Wholesale international roaming markets have complex competition dynamics. They are characterized by the reciprocity of wholesale roaming agreements and traffic internalization inside transnational groups. These circumstances limit price competition at the wholesale level. The traditional regulatory approach applied to electronic communication markets has been primarily focused on wholesale regulation. However, empirical evidence shows that even if wholesale charges are reduced, retail roaming markets continue to operate at very high retail margins (for example, more than 200% retail mark-up over wholesale charges for data roaming services and incoming calls). This proves that in international roaming markets wholesale charge reductions are not necessarily passed on to retail prices. It can thus be inferred that wholesale price regulation alone is in most cases not sufficient to ensure that benefits are passed through to end users.     

Assessing the regional digital divide across the European Union-27

Despite the efforts devoted to the analysis of the digital divide over the last years, the regional evidence on this issue is still scarce. Within this context, the goals of this paper are twofold: (1) measuring the digital divide across the regions of the 27 Member States and within each country and (2) explaining the observed regional disparities. The analysis leads to identify Dutch regions as the Top-10 in ICT, while Greece and Bulgaria occupy the Bottom-10. Therefore, results show that the regional digital divide reflects to some extent the income gap. However, regional policy seems to be having some positive implications for technology adoption. In particular, the rural-versus-urban dimension of the digital gap appears to be less important than it is usually claimed to. Likewise, some evidence is found of the role of cultural and institutional factors in ICT adoption, an issue that has not been previously analyzed at the regional level.