There exist a vast number of studies on the banking industry. However, the insurance industry remains relatively unexplored. Increasingly, Austrian insurance institutions are becoming important as financial intermediaries in the domestic market, and - based on proximity advantage - also in the...

This paper investigates the market structure of Arab GCC banking industry during the years of 1993 to 2002 using the most frequently applied measures of concentration kbank concentration ratio (CRk) and Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) and evaluates the monopoly power of banks over the ten years...

The profit-maximizing and oligopoly bank model developed by Bresnahan and Lau allows determining the degree of market power held by an average bank. The equilibrium price equation includes a mark up, which is not used in the case of perfect competition but which is partially used in the case of...

This paper surveys the recent literature devoted to the analysis of the interactions between the adoption of voluntary or negotiated agreements as a tool of environmental policy and market structure. The goal of this survey is twofold. On the one hand, we would like to identify the market...

The economic liberalization in India was expected to boost the economy, particularly the industrial sector through faster technological development. The Schumpeterian hypothesis, which studies the relationship between market structure variables such as firm size and market concentration and...

In the UK, SSAP 13 requires that firms immediately expense most of their R&D expenditures.The reported earnings of high-R&D expenditure firms are therefore likely to convey less valuerelevantinformation to investors than those of less research-intensive firms. Using a sample offirms from the...

Using a panel data set of 361 German corporations for the period 1991-1996 we test the hypothesis that firms with more efficient governance structures have higher profitabilities. To determine efficiency we compare firms with respect to ownership concentration, the identity of owners, capital...

Although there has been an intensive debate on the relative merits of different sys-tems of corporate governance, empirical evidence on the link between corporate governance andfirm performance almost exclusively refers to the market-oriented Anglo-Saxon system. This papertherefore investigates...

This paper analyzes productivity levels, dispersion and growth in the Bolivian Manufacturing Sector during the Market Liberalization Period: 1988-2001. These years are characterized first, by a period of macroeconomic stabilization and 1st Generation Reforms (1988-1993), second, by a period of...

Many high technology goods are based on standards that require several essential patents owned by different IP holders. This gives rise to a complements and a double mark-up problem. We compare the welfare effects of two different business strategies dealing with these problems. Vertical...