Following in the footsteps of the man whose name is associated with the Forty Thieves, and whose immortal words gave him access to the treasure, the twenty-first century's Alibaba found his pot of gold in Chinese consumer with his 'Open Sesame': the protection that Alipay delivers to consumers....

The Authority for Consumers & Markets has conducted a study into the potential effects of standard products on competition in the financial sector. The analysis shows that it is not likely that standard products will increase competition in financial markets. There is a risk that providers...

We examine the effect of US branch banking deregulations on the entry size of new firms using micro-data from the US Census Bureau. We find that the average entry size for startups did not change following the deregulations. However, among firms that survived at least four years, a greater...

The study investigates the competitive conditions and profitability drivers of commercial banks in MENA region in the context of Panzar-Rosse model. It is the first study of its kind that examines a large sample of MENA banks (149 banks) for an extensive period (1999-2012) during an era of...

We use loan-level data to study how the organizational structure of banks impacts small business lending. We find that decentralized banks ― where branch managers have greater autonomy over lending decisions ― give larger loans to small firms and those with “soft information”. However,...

Reforms of financial regulation after the crisis of 2007-2009 raise the question of what is the relation between financial regulators and competition authorities. Should competition authorities play a role in financial regulation? Should they co-operate with financial regulators? Or should they...

Competition law compliance has become increasingly important in the banking industry as the number of infringements and the associated fines imposed by the European Commission are rising. This article shows that not only governments and regulators, but also shareholders and managers, should be...

The fixing of the Libor and Euribor benchmark rates has proven vulnerable to manipulation. Individual rate-setters may have incentives to fraudulently distort their submissions. For the contributing banks to collectively agree on the direction in which to rig the rate, however, their interests...

The fixing of the Libor and Euribor benchmark rates has proven vulnerable to manipulation. Individual rate-setters may have incentives to fraudulently distort their submissions. For the contributing banks to collectively agree on the direction in which to rig the rate, however, their interests...

We find that stricter merger control legislation increases abnormal announcement returns of targets in bank mergers by 7 percentage points. Analyzing potential explanations for this result, we document an increase in the pre-merger profitability of targets, a decrease in the size of acquirers...