Helping hand or grabbing hand?: Politicians, supervision regime, financial structure and market view

Almost all the literature on the evolution of the financial supervision architecture stresses the importance of financial market characteristics in determining the recent trend toward more unification. But in the real world it is not always clear to what extent market features matter. We present two complementary approaches to gain insights in the above relationship, focusing on the political cost and benefit analysis. First, a cross-country study tests two alternative theories—the helping hand and the grabbing hand view of government—to determine the impact of the market structure on the supervisory setting. Our evidence seems more consistent with the grabbing hand view, considering the degree of banking concentration a proxy of the capture risk and presuming the market demonstrates a preference for consolidation of supervisory powers. Second, the results of a survey among financial CEOs in Italy confirm a market preference for a more consolidated supervisory regime but reveal only weak consistency between the views of the policymakers and those of the market operators.     

Political economy of income distribution dynamics

Income distribution varies considerably across countries; it tends to become more equal with development in some countries, but just the opposite occurs in other countries. This paper provides a theoretical investigation of the persistent differences in income distribution across countries over time. Motivated by the relationship between income distribution and public spending at different school levels for a broad range of countries over the past 30 years, the analysis centers on the role of public education where specific investments interact with political involvement by different socio-economic groups. Socio-economic groups may form lobbies to influence education policy making. The formation of lobbies is endogenous. Persistent inequality is caused by persistent lobbying efforts of the wealthy that lead to an allocation of public education spending more biased toward them.     

PRIVATIZATION AND EFFICIENCY: FROM PRINCIPALS AND AGENTS TO POLITICAL ECONOMY

Abstract.  We survey the theoretical literature on privatization and efficiency by tracing its evolution from the applications of agency theory to recent contributions in the field of political economy. The former extend the theory of regulation with incomplete information to address privatization issues, comparing state-owned enterprises with private regulated firms. The benefits of privatization may derive either from the constraints it places on malevolent agents or from the impossibility of commitment by a benevolent government because of incomplete contracts. Contributions dealing with political economy issues separate privatization from restructuring decisions. They either explore bargaining between managers and politicians or analyse the impact of privatization shaped by political preferences on efficiency. The theoretical results regarding the relation between privatization and efficiency do not lead to any definitive conclusion. Privatization may increase productive efficiency when restructuring takes place whereas its effects on allocative efficiency still remain uncertain.     

加强高等职业院校校园文化建设增进大学生心理健康

良好的大学校园文化对大学生的世界观、人生观和价值观的形成、人格的塑造、理想信念与目标追求的导向及意志品质的磨练等都有着重要影响.高职院校校园文化建设存在着一系列亟待解决的问题,需要从多方面加强校园文化建设,进而促进大学生的心理健康.     

Financial Development and the Social Cost of Financial Intermediation in Africa

This article investigates the effect of financial development on the social costs of financial intermediation across a large number of banks in Africa. The study distinguishes between countries that are financially developed and those that are not financially developed to examine the impact of financial development on the social costs of financial intermediation. A sample of 260 banks from 29 countries in Africa is used over an 8-year period from 2006 to 2013. We employ both Random Effect and GMM techniques to resolve the issues of unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity. We observe that overall, financial development reduces the social costs of intermediation. We also determine that the social costs of intermediation are lower for countries that have more developed financial systems compared to those with less developed financial systems. Our study is useful because it suggests that if countries want to reduce their social costs of intermediation, they should develop their financial systems.     

The effect of culture on consumption: A behavioral approach

This paper studies the connection between culture and consumption behavior. Linkages are drawn from manifestations of culture, involving both political style and personal preferences, to the key character traits of self-restraint and future focus. These character traits are then related to consumption behavior through a quasi-hyperbolic discounting model to generate hypotheses. Panel data for 89 countries and territories for the period 1999–2018 are used to test these hypotheses. With respect to political style, the results indicate that corruption, non-transparency in the public sector, and government intervention in banking reduce a country’s consumption. With respect to personal attributes, a long-term view is found to lower consumption and individualism to raise it. This study is motivated by a concern that for China in particular, stronger consumption will be needed to sustain long-term growth. Of particular relevance to the Chinese case, we find that countries with Confucian traditions have national consumption rates that are lower than global norms by more than 10 percentage points as a share of GDP. Even against this backdrop, however, we suggest there is scope to boost consumption with policies that fight corruption, promote transparency, reduce government intervention in the economy, and foster a stronger sense of the individual.     

Internationalisation choices of Polish firms during the post-socialism transition period: The role of institutional conditions at firm’s foundation

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the home country radical change of institutional conditions influences the firm-level internationalisation process understood as exporting. In particular, we aim to broaden our understanding of how changing institutional conditions affect the internationalisation process of Polish firms founded in different institutional conditions; i.e. under the communist regime (before 1990), in the transition period (1990–2003), and in the post-transition period (2004 and later). We compare and contrast in each period three crucial aspects describing the internationalisation process: time to internationalisation, direction and degree of internationalisation. We find support for the assertion that the institutional conditions at a firm’s birth influence the internationalisation paths of emerging market firms in terms of speed, direction and degree of internationalisation. Firms founded either in the transition (1990–2003), or in the post-transition phase (2004 and later) are more likely to: (1) make the decision about internationalisation earlier in their life cycle, (2) enter developed markets, and (3) achieve a higher degree of internationalisation than firms founded under the communist regime (before 1990).