Market definition, and, in particular, being able to identify who is in which product market, lies at the heart of competition law. The identification of demand elasticities necessary to conduct a formal definition of product market can be time consuming and often there is insufficient data to...

This paper studies the relationship between fund and provider characteristics, and fund performance using a sample of 4,197 U.K personal pension funds operated by 35 providers over a 30 years' period (1980-2009). The fund performance is measured on an annual basis (short-term) and over the whole...

This paper analyses the regulatory attitudes to asset valuation in the 20th century. It focuses in particular on the U.S. experience from Smith v Ames 169 U.S. 466 (1898) to Federal Power Commission v Hope Natural Gas 320 U.S. 591 (1944) and on the experience in the U.K. in last two decades of...

Consumer confidence indices (CCIs) are a closely monitored barometer of countries' economic health, and an informative forecasting tool. Using European and US data, we provide a case study of the two recent stock market meltdowns (the post-dotcom bubble correction of 2000-2002 and the 2007-2009...

This study presents the first comprehensive compilation of the number of people around the world who own shares directly and indirectly. We document that at least 310 million people in 59 countries (24 developed and 35 emerging market nations) own stock directly [Table 1]. Nearly 173 million of...

This paper focuses on the application and interpretation of measures of rate of return for competition law. Amongst other results we analyse how outsourcing and similar arrangements impact on the rate of profitability and show that the measurement is more volatile the greater the rate of profit,...

The paper contributes to the literature on integration of stock markets by addressing the issue of non-synchronous trading. We argue that controlling for time differences in trading hours of stock markets is important and show that time-adjustment improves estimates of market integration. We...

Understanding the impact of changes in regulation on market risk is crucial but there is no literature giving clear evidence that market risk responds to expected changes in regulation designed to change risk (mostly because of a dearth of cases where the risk effect is isolated). This paper...

This paper is concerned with the effect of enforced home bias on the development of emerging stock markets. It provides a detailed study of the impact on the Warsaw Stock Exchange of the Polish pension fund reforms and the associated restrictions on international investment. The time path of...

Pension reform has become a major policy issue for both developed and developing countries in recent years. In developing countries the impact of these reforms on the development of their financial markets is critical. However, the initial expectations that pension reforms in developing...