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We show that foreign capital liberalization reduces capital misallocation and increases aggregate productivity for affected industries in India. The staggered liberalization of access to foreign capital across disaggregated industries allows us to identify changes in firms' input wedges, overcoming major challenges in the measurement of the effects of changing misallocation. Liberalization increases capital overall. For domestic firms with initially high marginal revenue products of capital (MRPK), liberalization increases revenues by 23%, physical capital by 53%, wage bills by 28%, and reduces MRPK by 33% relative to low MRPK firms. The effects of liberalization are largest in areas with less developed local banking sectors, indicating that inefficiencies in that sector may cause misallocation. Finally, we propose an assumption under which a novel method exploiting natural experiments can be used to bound the effect of changes in misallocation on treated industries' aggregate productivity. These industries' Solow residual increases by 3–16%.

In several African regions, economic integration has successfully reduced tariff protection by freezing the opportunity to raise applied tariffs against fellow integration partners above those promised. In this paper, we examine whether the regional tariff commitments on the continent have come at the expense of adverse side-effects on the prevalence of other – non-tariff – trade barriers. More specifically, regional tariff commitments have not only amplified applied tariff overhangs – the difference between Most Favoured Nation (MFN) bound tariffs and effectively applied tariffs – for African members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), but have also sharply reduced their tariff policy space within Africa, thus leaving regulatory policies such as sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures and technical barriers to trade (TBT) as two of the few legitimate options to level the playing field with market competitors. Comparing the effects of applied tariff overhangs towards all vis-à-vis African trading partners on SPS and TBT notifications of 35 African WTO members between 2001 and 2017, we find no overall relationship between tariff overhangs and import regulation in our preferred model setting. By contrast, larger tariff overhangs specific to intra-African trade relations have a significant share in increasing the probability of SPS measures and TBT. Our findings have important implications for future Pan-African integration under the recently launched African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in that success in fostering continental economic integration does not exclusively depend on the realisation of tariff liberalisation, but at the same time on a mindful coordination with non-tariff provisions., Discussion Paper

In Frankreich und Deutschland war Abtreibung über Jahrhunderte hinweg als Straftat kodifiziert. Zwar setzten die Auseinandersetzungen um die selbstbestimmte Mutterschaft schon im 19. Jahrhundert ein, doch bis zur Liberalisierung sollte es noch lange dauern. Dieser Beitrag nimmt die entscheidenden Entwicklungen des Abtreibungsrechts in den 1970er-Jahren in den Blick und zeigt, unter welchen gesellschaftlichen und politischen Gegebenheiten es in Frankreich und der BRD zu rechtlichen Veränderungen kam. Dabei werden die Akteure, ihre Zielsetzungen und Aktionsformen analysiert und es kommen (rechts)historische und rechtsvergleichende Methoden zur Anwendung. Das Jahr 1971 ist als 'Schaltjahr' zu sehen. Abortion was codified as a criminal offence for centuries in France and West Germany. The controversy over self-determined motherhood began as early as the 19th century, but legislation was not liberalized until decades later. This article looks at key developments in abortion law at the beginning of the 1970s and shows the social and political circumstances under which legal changes occurred in France and West Germany. Using comparative legal history and social history methods, the article explores the actors, their objectives and forms of actions. In this respect, the year 1971 can be regarded as a crucial moment in history.

The processes of objectively conditioned integration in the economic, political, legal, and institutional spheres of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) Member States took place step by step, starting from preferential trade agreements, passing to the customs union, the common market and other stages of integration. This process is accompanied by the gradual deepening of trade liberalization with potential partners. The selection of potential partners should be carried out through a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the structure and volumes of foreign trade of the EEU Member States (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia) with third parties, their markets structure, existing customs regulation, trade barriers, and possible export potential. The research evaluated the EEU's possible enlargement effects on the Member States' economic indicators. The research aimed to assess the possible consequences of EEU expansion and signing free trade agreements, considering Pakistan, Korea, and Malaysia as potential trade partners. Modeling the effect of an FTA assumes horizontal zeroing of tariffs between partners. Then, using the GTAP model, a new state of general equilibrium was calculated corresponding to the changed parameters of customs and tariff regulation. In this case, most variables, such as change in GDP, production output, and export-import volumes, were estimated, manifesting the economic effect of trade liberalization.

This paper compares the effects of macroprudential policy, fiscal policy, and two liberalization policies on house prices and bank balance sheets and examines the welfare and distributional implications of each policy. Three prominent features of the Chinese economy, including monopolistically competitive banks, a managed float, and capital controls, are built into a New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to produce a quantitative analysis of these policies. The model is estimated with Bayesian methods using Chinese data from 1998Q1 to 2016Q4. Results show that macroprudential policy greatly improves welfare and is the most effective tool for strengthening banks' balance sheets.

Competition policies are key for every government, the more so in times of economic crisis like the current one, because they foster recovery without having to increase the public debt. However, they imply thinly spread benefits, barely visible to the public, in the face of highly concentrated costs weighing heavily on specific interest groups, with the significant risk that politicians decline to pursue them. Nevertheless, in 2015 the Italian government announced the adoption of a competition reform affecting strategic economic sec- tors (pharmacies, transport, insurance, energy, postal services, com- munications, the legal professions). The allegedly wide-ranging consequences of the reform provoked the strong opposition of the interest groups involved, lengthening a decision-making process that only ended in 2017 with the adoption of Law no. 124/2017. This article aims at analysing the role played by the interest groups and their effective impact on the outcome. The work examines which interest groups mobilized during the decision-making process and the strategies they adopted to oppose the reform. It is argued that the type of interest groups involved matters: while, despite the Government’s intentions, the reform’s impacts were neutralized by those interest groups that acquired enough power during the deci- sion-making process to mitigate the pro-competitive objectives of the Government, on the other hand, in some sectors, the interactions between varying interests led to different results.

Using a recent reform policy of stock market liberalization in China, the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect(SHSC), as a quasi-natural experiment, we investigate the effect of stock market liberalization on stock price synchronicity. The difference-in-difference analysis suggests that the implementation of the SHSC significantly reduces stock price synchronicity of eligible firms listed in the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and this effect mainly exists in listed firms with a lower degree of openness. Furthermore, we document that the SHSC promotes information transparency and voluntary disclosure frequency. At last, we find that the SHSC does not affect stock price synchronicity of eligible firms listed in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

China's natural gas market is not only growing rapidly but is also in the process of liberalization, indicating the potential of oil-gas price decoupling. In this situation, this study re-examines whether oil-gas price decoupling is happening in China, in order to analyze the achievements of market reform. First, a multi-scale decomposition approach is used to find oil-gas price patterns in the time-frequency domain. Then, a quantile-on-quantile analysis is used to acquire the entire dependence structure between oil and gas prices. The findings indicate that the association between oil and gas prices increases over scales but varies for quantiles. Specifically, clear evidence is provided that China's liquefied natural gas (LNG) price is independent of the oil prices selected for this study in the short term, whereas no additional evidence exists that proves oil and gas prices have already been decoupled. This finding indicates that the oil-indexation pricing mechanism still remains dominant. Based on the empirical results, the authors suggest that the establishment of trading hubs, the removal of restrictive clauses in contracts, and the diversification of pricing mechanisms should be simultaneously promoted in China.

Recently, new electricity operators have rapidly emerged in Japan after the total liberalisation of the electricity retail market in 2016. These operators have advertised various potential benefits that their renewable electricity production can offer, including local dissemination of renewable electricity, local energy self-support, and vitalisation of the local economy. However, there is limited literature globally, as well as in Japan, concerning electricity consumers’ preferences regarding the geographic location of renewable electricity production. This study aimed to analyse consumer preferences for local production of renewable energy to narrow the gap in the literature. The willingness-to-pay value for local renewable electricity production was 44.7% higher than that of renewable electricity produced in other areas, with the values being JPY 9.1 and JPY 6.3 for 1% increases, respectively. Women and older people had greater preference for renewable electricity. Energy security was predicted to have a negative impact on the installation of renewable electricity.

While China was reducing tariffs as part of the WTO accession process, it was also effectively restricting exports in some sectors by reducing the rebates of the value added tax (VAT) for exporters. We use a multi-sector multi-country Ricardian model to examine the extent to which these de facto export tax changes benefited China and nullified the benefits to the rest of the world of China’s trade liberalization. We show that trade liberalization benefited China’s trade partners both through an improvement in their terms of trade and through a reallocation of resources from protected imported sectors to exportable sectors. We find that the partial rebate policy on VAT exports provided a small effect overall on the welfare of China and trading partners, although some countries lost as much as 2/3 of their gain from China’s liberalization based on tariffs alone. We also use our model to solve for China’s optimal export taxes and calculate the impact of optimal export taxes on China and the rest of the world.

The neoliberal approach taken to the transition from socialism to capitalism in the six former Yugoslav republics has revealed its weaknesses in all spheres of economic activities, including food production. These countries have lost sovereignty with respect to regulating important national policy areas like food trade and production. Liberalisation of the food trade has adversely affected national economies by destroying many small-scale farmers and food producers. Corporate supermarkets have been taking over an ever bigger slice of the retail pie. Social movements are calling for direct democratic control over resources and food production to be regained. The article examines the prospects of these countries to overcome the increasing food insecurity by introducing food sovereignty Neoliberalni pristop k tranziciji iz socializma v kapitalizem v šestih nekdanjih jugoslovanskih republikah je razkril svoje slabe strani v vseh sferah ekonomskih dejavnosti, vključno s proizvodnjo hrane. Te države so izgubile svojo suverenost pri reguliranju pomembnih področij nacionalnih politik, kot sta proizvodnja hrane in preskrba s hrano. Liberalizacija preskrbe s hrano je z uničenjem številnih malih kmetovalcev in proizvajalcev hrane škodljivo učinkovala na nacionalne ekonomije. Trgovske korporacije so prevzemale vse večji delež maloprodajnega kolača. Družbena gibanja pozivajo k temu, da bi ponovno pridobili neposredni demokratični nadzor nad viri in proizvodnjo hrane. V članku obravnavamo možnosti teh držav, da bi premagale naraščajočo prehransko negotovost, tako da bi vpeljale prehransko suverenost

The literature on deindustrialisation often neglects the role of finance in the decline in manufacturing, despite the increasing shift towards financial speculation relative to real investments. This paper tries to bridge this gap in the literature by examining the role of finance in Nigeria's premature deindustrialisation, particularly banks’ drive for short-term profits and their choice to lend to the oil and gas sector over manufacturing. We show that deindustrialisation in Nigeria can be traced back to the effect of the neoliberal policies of the 1980s and the take-off of financial liberalisation, corresponding to the decline in manufacturing value added. In the same period, employment share in manufacturing declined, however, at a distinctly lower rate than manufacturing value added. Therefore, higher productivity of labour is considered a less prominent factor for premature deindustrialisation in Nigeria, not least due to the low level of technological upgrading. We argue that the disproportionate flow of bank credit to the oil and gas and services sectors relative to manufacturing is further incentivised by the government's failed subsidy to the oil industry, which guarantees rent extraction for private interests. Using the Autoregressive Distributed lag (ARDL) estimation for the period 1981-2018, we find evidence that suggests a significant negative impact of domestic credit by banks on manufacturing value added in Nigeria. The disproportionate flow of domestic bank credit to the oil and gas and services sectors in Nigeria also indicates a significant negative impact on the country's manufacturing. On the other hand, net domestic credit by financial institutions, which includes financial flows by domestic development banks, has a significant positive impact on manufacturing.

Since the 1980s, with the continuous deepening of penetration of reform and liberalization, there has been scientific and technological development. In such an environment, the traditional teaching model of colleges and universities posed new challenges and put forward higher requirements for English teaching practice. To enhance the performance of English instruction, this article applies a multiple media technique to start English education practice; firstly, through the study of the current English teaching mode, it analyzes the specific needs of teachers and students and designs the functions to meet their specific needs. Secondly, combined with multimedia technology and network technology, a multimedia English practice teaching platform was designed and implemented. In this way, the overall educational efficiency has been increased by nearly 30%, and the acceptance of the model by students has been increased by 35%. Finally, this paper constructs a small multimedia piano practice teaching platform for testing and proves the practicability and usefulness of multimedia synthesis technology in English education practice through comparison with traditional English teaching effects. Experiments show that the adoption of multimedia artificial smart technology in English education has a remarkable impact on enhancing the result of English teaching, can stimulate students’ learning enthusiasm, and realize the reform of English teaching.

PurposeGlobalisation has influenced many countries, over the last few decades with financial globalisation and liberalisation bringing regulatory reforms in the banking sector. Thus, this study aims to fill a gap in the literature by examining the influence of globalisation on Islamic and conventional bank productivity in Southeast Asia.Design/methodology/approachThe sample comprised 155 banks (23 Islamic and 132 conventional) from 4 countries from 2008 to 2017. Panel data techniques will be used, together with data envelopment analysis (DEA)-based Malmquist productivity index (MPI), to investigate the impact of chosen main determinants on bank productivity. A panel regression analysis will be performed after generating the productivity index from the DEA-based MPI frontier.FindingsAccording to the findings, Islamic banks are statistically significantly more productive than conventional banks, and the findings of the t-test are corroborated by the findings of nonparametric tests. Furthermore, the findings of the panel regression model reveal that bank specific factors and macroeconomic variables are significant determinants to bank productivity. Surprisingly, the findings also show that the influence of social globalisation elements tends to be negatively related to conventional bank productivity.Originality/valueThis study adds to the existing literature by bridging the globalisation gap in the productivity of the dual banking industry, particularly in the specific context of Southeast Asia, given that the area is representative of Islamic and finance globally.

Uncertainty in the markets associated with COVID-19 created the need for choosing the optimal model of energy markets. At the current stage of energy markets development, oligopoly tendencies tend to prevail. The article discusses the problem of choosing an effective energy market model, using the example of the electricity market. The competitive energy market of the European Union (finalized with the adoption of the Third Energy Package) was chosen as the basic model, with which the energy markets of the Russian Federation and Azerbaijan are compared. The basic indicators of the EU market were defined and compared with similar indicators for the Russian and Azerbaijani markets. The article explored the main tendencies as well as deadweight losses for Russian and Azerbaijani markets. Recommendations for improving the competitiveness of the markets are developed. The study showed that the level of market competitiveness was directly associated with the economic security of the energy market. The ways of increasing market liberalization in Russia and Azerbaijan were proposed. The proposed gradual liberalization of electricity markets involves the transition from a closed monopolistic to an open competitive electricity market, changing the institutional structure, the search for new and effective mechanisms of interaction between the buyer and seller of electricity. It also creates an opportunity to improve the quality of electricity supply, increase the investment attractiveness of the sector at large, and reduce the cost of electricity.Keywords: degree of competition; electrical power; energy markets; European Union; market model.JEL Classifications: D43, D47DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.11634

This essay explores the role of narratives in the field of the Irish abortion debate. In specific, it explores the different types of narratives that both the pro-choice and pro-life groups manipulate in order to draw support from The Irish populace. The author explains that the pro-choice groups employ political-legal narratives To argue for the right to abortion whereas historical narratives and anti-British sentiments are more commonly found within pro-life narratives. However, the true purpose of the pro-life narratives is to prevent the secularization and liberalization of Ireland's laws, thereby maintaining the patriarchy at the top of the social hierarchy. However, with the 2018 referendum on the constitutional ban on abortion resulting in a liberalization of Ireland's abortion laws, the lack of success on The pro-life end is revealed, and a possible wave of liberalization may follow to permanently shift the social hierarchy.

The emergence of neo-liberalism as a hegemonic ideological doctrine followed both the awkwardness of social democracy and the demise of communism, during the 1970s and 1990s. The main objective of neo-liberalism was to achieve socioeconomic development and political stability; using its unique instruments of liberalization, deregulation and privatization policies. To achieve these objectives, ideological indoctrination was the entire agenda of neoliberalism. Those who are baptized by this ideology, orchestrated neoliberalism as alpha and omega as well as the holy water needed to cure all human beings from socioeconomic and political disaster. Unfortunately, it became a cause of catastrophe instead of panacea since its advent time. From 1990 to 2000, neoliberalism recorded its first socioeconomic and political crises and failed at it; thus, other alternatives have emerged. After 2010 western’s climax crises, neo-liberalism shifted to a new dogma of neo-populism. Consequently, this paper explores the concept and ideological hegemony of neoliberalism and how neo-populism became a reaction of neoliberalism. The study examines the ideological paradox and its crises and demonstrates how it became an end and new beginnings. Key words: Neoliberalism, neopopulism, world-crises, end-of-history, new-alternatives, Fukuyama.

At European level, in recent years, a tendency of the investors heading towards the real estate sector can be noticed, which, in our opinion, may lead to important structural changes of this market. The changes are mainly determined by the liberalization process of the real estate offer formation method on the investment markets. Thus, the adequate estimation of the value of real estate and the knowledge of its characteristics become more and more important. In this context, this article is important by presenting the adequate techniques and methods for the allocation of the market value of a real estate on its components.

This article deals with the issues of educating journalists during the Franco regime in Spain and the place occupied by the School of Journalism of the Catholic Church in this system. The first years of dictatorship were characterized by a strong subordination of education and occupation to the current interests of the state, which regulated access to the profession and education only within the framework of the State School of Journalism. In the second half of the 50’s there was a gradual liberalization of the system, consisting in the gradual admission of other entities to the organization of vocational education of journalists, especially the Catholic Church. This allowed for the launch in 1960 of the School of Journalism of the Catholic Church, the functioning of which was the first manifestation of the regime’s gradual withdrawal from state supervision over the process of educating journalists. The Catholic Church School referred to the pre-war, excellent traditions of the journalism school organized by the Catholic daily El Debate, becoming a kind of counterweight to the regime’s State School of Journalism.The competition between schools (although still slight at that time) contributed to an increase in the quality of education. The emphasis on the completion of general education or the design of curricula taking into account the development of information technology made it possible to equip students with competences required in the labour market, which previously could only be obtained to a greater or lesser extent in practice.

In order to explore the influence of interest rate liberalization on profitability, an empirical analysis is carried out with the panel data of commercial banks in China from 2009 to 2019. Then, the heterogeneity of the impact is studied among different banks. The results show that, first, interest rate liberalization and commercial banks’ profitability have an inverted U-shaped relationship, whereby interest rate liberalization would increase the profitability of banks in the early stage but would reduce the profitability after reaching a peak inflection point at the later stage. Secondly, the impact varies among different banks, being more significant in urban commercial banks and large state-owned banks.

The paper examines the role of investment cooperation and national foreign investment regime as a means to promote China’s economic and political interests and to respond to new global challenges that the country faces nowadays. To this end, the author examines the main stages of China’s liberalization of the legal regime for foreign investment from the end of the 1970s with a special focus on a new foreign investment law. In doing so the author attempts to link the evolution of investment regulation in the PRC with the dynamics of international relations development and the changing role of China as a regional and global actor. The author emphasizes that a trend towards the emergence of a polycentric world order not only provokes the rise of international tensions but also provides new incentives to promote dialogue and enhance cooperation between states and non-governmental actors, particularly by encouraging foreign investments. At the same time, there is a growing need to improve regulatory mechanisms for direct foreign investments. All these contradictory trends have directly affected China’s foreign investment regime reform. In this context the investment cooperation between the PRC and the European Union is of particular importance. The EU possesses a set of innovative technological solutions and competencies that are of particular interest to the Chinese leaders in the context of their efforts to modernize the country’s economy. The paper examines the volume, dynamics and key directions of investment flows between China and the EU member-states. The fact that after seven years of difficult negotiations, the EU and China managed to develop a special bilateral regulatory mechanism — EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment — underscores again the importance of this cooperation for both parties. Even though the EU has suspended the ratification of this deal on the pretext of human right violations in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the author concludes, that in the future this agreement will come into force, since the very logic of the emerging polycentric world order urges for deeper cooperation between the EU and China. In this context, the investment regulation appears not only as a means to protect the Chinese economic interests, but also as an instrument to strengthen China’s international positions in the changing global context.

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the effect of governance – a proxy for network effects on small and medium enterprises (SME) growth through access to new markets. Specifically, investigate how export intensity (EI) and performance are affected. This study also tests related theories, given the growth in the post-liberalization setting of a developing economy. Specifically, this study tests Uppsala and born global (BG) perspectives for internationalization and resource-based view for performance.Design/methodology/approachThe authors collect secondary data for each SME over a 20 year period from a growth-oriented developing economy – India. This period is after the liberalization of the Indian economy. Thus, the authors test the hypotheses in this context. The authors expect that exports would surge for SMEs given the governance structures considered. The authors consider several governance modes and two types of product classifications, namely, products and services.FindingsThe authors find conditional support for the two models – indicating that governance structures do not consistently support finding new markets. Further, given the governance structure, EI is not consistently a means to improved performance. This is contrary to the expectations. However, at the same time, the authors do find evidence that governance matters and affects products and services differently.Research limitations/implicationsWhile the authors conduct research in India which has a variety of cultures and state policies, the authors still believe comparative study with multi-country data from developing countries might bring further insights. Further, primary data would also help to understand governance and motivational effects (the authors did not consider the later). Implications: The authors believe the research will have implications for policy since the authors find effects of governance. Hence, specific policies that improve the performance of a governance type could be adopted.Practical implicationsAlthough SMEs are affected by many factors, the authors find significant effects for important variables. Hence, the authors believe the government could use the study to design proper policies so that new markets could be discovered through different governance forms, through strategic investment and capacity building.Social implicationsSMEs are a key part of the social fabric of a society/country. The work deals with how SMEs could be helped. Hence, the authors believe the work has important implications for society. Further, as the work deals with large firm-SME interfaces, the authors also inform how these different governance structures are performing and where attention is needed.Originality/valueThe authors find that certain governance-type and SME-type work well together. Further, networks through the governance structures help find new markets – depending on SME-type. The authors find partial support for the Uppsala model and also for the BG model, again depending on the SME-type.

We identify factors influencing energy efficiency and the role of price instruments such as tax and technology use in reducing energy intensity at the firm level. We use data from 2001 to 2015 for India's manufacturing sector from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy. Our result strongly suggests that R&D and productivity have a positive impact on achieving energy efficiency. In such a case, at least one-to-one correspondence between the tax and energy intensity may help promote renewable energy use if they are subsidized and allowed to come under the provision of tax credit or tax exemption. Since price instruments do not produce any revenue recycling effect, policymakers can trade-off between increasing corporate tax and generating employment. Therefore, environmental regulations should strictly relate to increase energy efficiency and bring the manufacturing sector out of the productivity dilemma. Also, as evidence from the empirical analysis, there is an urgent need to substitute vintage capital with new capital and better technology. In addition to the existing liberalization policies, the Government must design green domestic policies for the manufacturing sector and map them with FDI and trade. As the polluted firms are energy-intensive, “Performance, Achievement and Trade” (PAT) policies need to focus on these firms.

The Azorean families, wherever they migrated, brought their cultural background in which there clearly stood out celebrations of the annual festival of the Divine Holy Spirit. The Festa do Divino, as it is called in Brazil, has turned, in places where they originally settled down, into one of the most famous religious festivals of the Brazilian Popular Catholicism. However, due to some contemporary sociocultural factors, mostly linked to the more and more frequent application of the laws of market economy to the sphere of religion and also to the visible liberalization of the religious festivals’ “rules of conduct,” it has been recently suffering from some important modifications. In this article, we present and analyze such changes, basing on the study of celebrations of this popular religious tradition in four different municipalities of four different states of Brazil.

PurposeShadow banking has been evolving rapidly in China, with banks actively using wealth management products (WMPs) to evade regulatory restrictions. These products are the largest constituent of China's shadow banking sector. A large number of these products are off-balance-sheet and considered a substitute for bank deposits. China's banking sector, especially the small and medium-sized banks (SMBs), uses these products to avoid regulatory restrictions and sustainability risk in the deposit market.Design/methodology/approachThis study empirically examined how banks in China, specifically SMBs, utilize these products on a short and long-run basis to manage and control their deposit levels. This study utilized a quarterly panel dataset from 2010 to 2019 for the top 30 Chinese banks, by first implementing a Panel ARDL-PMG model. For cross-sectional dependence, this study further executed a cross-sectional augmented autoregressive distributive lag model (CS-ARDL).FindingsUnder regulations avoidance theory, the findings revealed that WMPs and deposits have a stable long-run substitute relationship. Furthermore, the WMP–Deposit substitute relationship was only significant and consistent for SMBs, but not for large four banks. The findings further revealed that the WMP–Deposit substitute relationship existed, even after the removal of the deposit rate limit imposed by the People's Bank of China (PBOC) to control the deposit rates.Research limitations/implicationsThe individual bank-issued WMPs' amount data is not available in any database. Therefore, this study utilized the number of WMPs as a proxy for China's banking sector's exposure to the wealth management business.Practical implicationsThis research helps policymakers to understand the Deposit–WMP relationship from the off-balance-sheet perspective. During the various stages of interest rate liberalization, banks were given more control to establish their deposit and loan interest rates. However, the deposit rates are still way below the WMP returns, making WMPs more competitive. This research suggests that policymakers should formulate a more balanced strategy regarding deposit rates and WMPs returns.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the existing literature on China's shadow banking by concentrating on the WMPs. This research represents one of the few studies that analyze regulatory arbitrage in terms of the WMP–Deposit relationship. Moreover, the implementation of CS-ARDL panel data models and multiple data sources makes this study's findings more reliable and significant.

This research is related to examines the new wave of online trading with respect to industries, brokerages. Stock market is one of the important elements of the Indian economy which determines the economic growth of India and financial state of the country. In today’s world there are millions of people are connected to the internet and many of them are from rural background. Last 30 years since 1991, GPL (Globalization, Privatization, Liberalization) the internet has impacted much on people perception. The customer satisfaction is only thing that make a business successful. The present study to find out the customer awareness towards online trading. The main objective of the study is to understand the how the online trades take place. The major reason for investing in the share market is convincing and easy to handle. Keywords: Indian Stock Market, Internet, Online Stock Trading, Stock Brokers

Liberalization and deregulation process started in 1991 has made lot of changes in the banking system. From a totally regulated environment, banking institutions have moved into a market driven competitive system. Changes gained momentum in the last few years. Globalization would gain greater speed in coming years particularly on account of expected opening up of financial services under WTO. Four trends changed the banking industry world over, viz, consolidation of players through mergers and acquisitions, globalization of operations, development of new technology, and universalisation of banking. Keywords: Consolidation, Banking industry, HR challenges, consequences, solutions

The article analyses the goals and imperatives of the Republic of Korea’s trade policy before the COVID-19 pandemic and taking into account its consequences. The RoK's trade policy aims to synchronize the interests of the state, conglomerates and small and medium-sized enterprises. For this purpose, a system of division of powers in the field of trade policy and diplomacy has been designed, which has proven to be very effective. The COVID-19 situation, which has exacerbated the growing trend of protectionism in international trade, highlighted the chronic structural problems of trade in the Republic of Korea of trade in the area of geographical and commodity structure – despite the positive dynamics of the country's exports. The challenge of countering protectionism, coupled with the need to diversify the commodity and geographic structure of exports, implies two areas of work: strengthening an industrial structure capable of producing competitive goods and expanding the network of free trade agreements. The need to address logistical problems, digitalization, and the trend towards decarbonization forces Korea to rely more heavily on the idea of promoting free trade. The country's leadership continues to criticize protectionism, guided by the idea of a balanced use of bilateral and multilateral instruments of liberalization.

This paper develops a model of multi-product firms with endogenous quality across products within a firm. The model can reconcile the empirical fact that product quality and market size exhibit an inverted U relationship. In our model, on the one hand a larger market has a larger scope of quality differentiation and induces firms to increase quality; on the other hand, market competition is more intense in a larger market, exerting a negative influence on quality. We show that the model without taking quality differentiation into consideration could significantly underestimate the market competition and welfare. Moreover, our numerical analysis suggests that the model without taking quality differentiation into consideration could also significantly overestimate the gains of trade liberalization.

Intermediate rubber goods are either used for production of finished rubber goods or used as a final consumer good. The intermediate rubber goods import of India are growing at a higher rate than the import of other major rubber products under the WTO regime. Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) of India have further liberalised the import into the country. The present study is an attempt to understand whether the tariff liberalisation of India under the RTAs causes growth in import of intermediate rubber products. The study analysed all the major intermediate rubber products listed in Chapter 40 of the Harmonised System Nomenclature of the World Customs Organisation using the methodologies, such as gravity modelling and break point analysis. The study found that more than the tariff policy, the growth in the domestic economy of India is the prime reason for higher import growth of items under the intermediate rubber products into the country.

This paper examines the role that trade liberalisation policies play in attracting FDI flows to African economies from 2000 to 2017. This study contributes to the extant literature on the relevance...

Society is going through transformation and disruption from time immemorial. Globalisation, liberalisation of the economies and technological disruptions have created unprecedented eventualities in the political, economic, social and industrial domains. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has added enhanced complexities to these domains. The role of leaders, thus, becomes an integral part of addressing these complexities. The authors argue that the leadership role in the business world appears to have transformed from top-down autocratic leadership to inclusive leadership; with each of the stakeholders having critical roles to play. The article summarises the lessons learnt from the Indian texts, scriptures and philosophy that contemporary leaders can consider and possibly adopt. A few examples from the scriptures and texts are discussed, linking to current leadership practices. Further, leaders are encouraged to expand their roles to address well-being, compassion, empathy and trust. To be more effective and impactful, the leaders need to continuously reinvent themselves with changing times and contexts.

How do democratic transitions affect trade policy? A well-known finding is that transitions in developing countries produce lower tariff rates. But prior work implicitly assumes that all forms of d...

In India, the increasing awareness with respect to CG, particularly in the commercial banking industry can be attached to a variety of factors such as liberalization, scams, corporate failures in banks, accounting and other irregularities that have led to an era of rising public distrust of the governance process in the banking landscape. Because of economic problems arising out of banking mis-management and failures, studies on bank profitability have become imperative for recognizing problems and mitigating economic risks. Over the last few years, Indian banks' toxic loan pile has increased considerably in addition to frequent instances of governance lapses being identified by the regulator. Indian banks' failure to adhere to acceptable business practices has unraveled a chain of events that have caused distress to the public causing the regulator to overhaul its outlook towards CG in banks and decision to infuse capital in the banking sector to revive it. The study attempts to assess the relation between governance and other factors' impact on the bank profitability with empirical evidence from Axis, HDFC, ICICI, PNB, SBI and Yes Bank. The study outlines links between the Bank's Size, Board Independence, Independence of Audit Committee, Audit Committee Strength, Duality of Role, NPA Divergence and profit by using Return on Equity, Return on Assets and Net Interest Margin as proxies for measuring profitability. The findings indicate that Audit Committee Independence, Audit Committee Strength had a statistically significant impact on bank profits, while Bank Size had a negative affiliation to profits as per all three indicators of profits.

It has been 30 years since Central Asian '-stan' countries, namely, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan declared their independence in 1991. The Republics have chosen various transition paths from centrally planned to the market-based economic system. Today, it is time to assess their transition journey. The research found that the protectionist policy by Central Asian governors, on top of the land-locked geographical environment, made trade costly. Consequently, economic development slows down, unemployment increases, and poverty rate extremes. Eventually, the isolated region (relatively, excluding Kazakhstan) is imprisoned in a low-income trap and framed into a vicious circle. As a solution for tackling high-trade costs in the region, the research utilizes the GTAP CGE economic modeling to draw policy-targeted scenarios. The study summarizes that tariff reduction/elimination and trade facilitation policies flourish the region by bringing significant economic welfare, robust GDP growth, sizable job creation, and considerable poverty reduction. The trade facilitation scenarios impact the region's economy much more positively than do tariff liberalization scenarios.

Implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement will lead to liberalization of trade in Africa, thus expanding the market for African products and services. Expansion of markets necessitates development of a regulatory framework that will promote healthy competition among businesses and protect consumers’ welfare. The Agreement recognizes this fact and has set out the Competition Protocol among the key enablers of its success. Since the regional economic communities (RECs) are the building blocks of the continental wide free trade area, the analysis of their regional competition regime is paramount for providing insight that will guide the development of the Competition Protocol. This article responds to this need by analyzing Africa’s four largest RECs and providing policy proposals on how the continental competition policy should be fashioned. Specifically, this article looks at the RECs’ institutional structure, principles, and carries out a legal, economic, and political analysis on the same. It examines how these laws relate to the three elements (abuse of dominance, anticompetitive mergers, and acquisitions) of competition policy and the challenges that they pose in achieving AfCFTA’s goal. It also looks into the challenges that affect trade and fair competition in the region. Finally, it offers proposals on the competition framework that bridge the gap between the AfCFTA Agreement objectives and the African economic, political, and legal realities.

The article considers various global factors influencing rural development under the conditions of liberalization of the agricultural land market in Ukraine. The author assesses the impact of global processes and global capital on the development of national farms, income distribution, access to land resources, production processes and equitable development in this country. It is proved that globalization, leading to increased concentration of agri-food production and business and expanding the role of large transnationalized corporations, is primarily aimed at exploiting the country’s existing comparative advantages, rather than increasing them, and promotes, in many recipient countries, a model of double economy split in the technological and socio-economic dimensions into qualitatively heterogeneous sectors. The author concludes that although global factors of agricultural production may have a relatively positive impact in macroeconomic terms, the dominance of multinational (transnational) companies, large exporting companies and financially powerful sovereign welfare funds in the market may create risks and threats of crowding out Ukrainian farmers from the market and blocking the sustainable development of rural areas. At the same time, Ukraine's agricultural sector will be transformed into a raw-material link of global food production chains dominated by large transnationalized entities, and a kind of raw-material enclave of transnationalized production will be created within the Ukrainian economy. The article argues that in today's global economy, where cardinal transformations are taking place and uncertainty is growing, land will become an increasingly valuable asset, attractive not only to agricultural producers but also to land speculators and those who try to maintain the value of their assets under the conditions of growing global risks. Under such conditions, investment in land will not at all necessarily contribute to the development of agricultural production, because speculative capital in the face of widespread expectations of a long and significant upward trend in land prices will prevail over productive agricultural capital. In general, this might lead to a significant increase in the cost of agricultural production and food prices. The author proves that the liberalization of the land market leads to increased risks of transfer of the control over Ukraine’s land resources to foreigners (sovereign financial funds and major international corporations), given their dramatic advantage by available financial resources for land acquisition, compared to those possessed by Ukraine’s residents. The article substantiates a set of policy measures and national policy instruments necessary to minimize the risks associated with the introduction (in the context of globalization) of free purchase and sale of agricultural land, which comply with the regulation principles of the European Union.

We show that there is no positive relationship between trade liberalization and economic growth during the Great Liberalization of the 1990s. We replicate Estevadeordal and Taylor (Rev Econom Statist 95:1669, 2013) and find that their estimated positive relationship between trade liberalization and economic growth is not robust. Their results are driven by outliers, internally inconsistent tariff data, inappropriate selection of the treatment year, and their specific data on economic growth.

For this study, we adopted a recent financial reform in China and used a difference-in-difference model to investigate its impact on corporate investment efficiency. The results indicate that stock...

Inclusive idea of education in India though implied in the Indian constitution, has always been looked upon with suspicion by the privileged castes, classes, gender, and ethnic groups. The reason was apprehension of undoing of the status quo that has had remained primordial and backed by religious sanctions for social stratification. Therefore, idea of affirmative action towards disadvantaged sections in education in general and higher education in particular has faced stiff resistance by the conservative (status quoist) forces with ideas such as merit, efficiency and promotion of liberalization. However, with the limited implementation of the affirmative action policies such conservative idea was challenged, and representation of the disadvantaged sections was ensured, albeit partially. As a result, glimmerings of hope could be seen alongside with the amelioration of the disadvantaged statuses and (partial) inclusive development. But the present government with their covert strategies has always wished to hamper such inclusive idea in education. And amidst the present pandemic COVID-19 situation, they have found the golden opportunity to blow such development by arbitrarily shifting the policies pertaining to education to cause subtle exclusion of the disadvantaged groups. Such a shift in the policies is deliberate as has been proposed as universal and non-temporary change especially in higher education, that is, changes have been introduced with post-pandemic effect. Also, this change that has tendency for leaning towards liberalization/privatization can be seen as a logical continuation of their policies for withdrawal of the state from providing (higher) education in terms of continuous reduction in allotment of budget towards education. Interestingly, to divert attention and avoid critical reflection the change in policies are conveniently placed under the guise of (forced) living with the virus that has caused pandemic COVID-19.

This paper studies the ex-post trade effects of China's multilateral, regional and bilateral trade liberalization using augmented gravity and panel data estimation methods for the period 1995–2016. China's accession to the WTO was revealed to have had a significant impact on the volume of trade as well as on bilateral exports and imports. Regional trade agreements and the majority of bilateral trade agreements were found not to be effective in increasing China's foreign trade. Only the agreements with Chile, Costa Rica and Switzerland were effective in increasing China's trade volume. Moreover, the results for Chile were driven by increases in both exports and imports, while for Costa Rica and Switzerland only by increased imports from these countries.

Indian enterprises have succeeded in climbing the ladder of outward M&A transactions and out performing everyone’s expectations post 1990s. This paper aims to recalibrate the empirical literature of India’s outbound M&A by considering the impact of host market size, appreciation in home currency, India’s trade openness and liberalization policies. This study attempts to examine the impact of the host market size, home international reserves and trade openness along with home currency appreciation on the volume of the outbound M&A by Indian firms, using augmented autoregressive distributed lag (augmented ARDL) bounds testing approach. Findings reveal that appreciation of Indian rupee and liberal norms towards trade, i.e. import and export both will inevitably benefit or push the Indian firms to acquire foreign firms overseas, in the short term as well as over the long term. This paper makes an effort to identify and describe the significant factors influencing the outbound M&A deals by Indian firms in the recent years, which were previously proved relevant for group of emerging economies at large.

El proceso de descentralización fiscal en Colombia, determinada por la descentralización hacia el mercado, tiene una relación intrínseca con las políticas de apertura económica que pueden ser rastreadas desde finales de la década de los años 60 del siglo XX, en la que se evidencia como el aumento del gasto derivado de las políticas de descentralización fiscal conllevaron a la adopción de políticas enfocadas en la liberalización y desregulación de la economía. Todo esto en sincronía con la puesta en marcha de la Modernización del Estado en Colombia. Este proceso genera un aumento de la opresión fiscal de corte indirecto y regresivo en el país y una pérdida de derechos del pueblo colombiano a partir de los postulados de eficiencia y eficacia impartida por el mercado, los cuales han evidenciado todo lo contrario al no comprender la descentralización atada a las relaciones sociales, económicas, culturales y políticas en el país que han generado una captura del Estado con procesos de corrupción, detrimentos patrimoniales y baja responsabilidad en la prestación de los servicios públicos y los derechos sociales.

The article examines the factors of convergence of price levels among European countries, even regarding the time lag since previous research on the Czech Republic's accession to the EU. In addition to the factors included in the Balassa-Samuelson model, it has been found that certain structural factors contribute to price convergence, as could be expected especially in the transition economies after accessing the EU in 2004. It has also been confirmed that in the context of liberalization of the economies in Central and Eastern Europe, the enlarged internal market and harmonization from the EU level, it is not possible to clearly distinguish between "tradable" and "non-tradable" sectors. Contrary to expectations, however, it has been questioned that due to price deregulation in the Czech Republic, reduced price deviation would be reported for goods with regulated prices so the threat of Baumol's disease is still seen in this context. It is also relevant for the context of European integration that it is possible to doubt the risk of price jumps in the Czech Republic after the adoption of the euro, regarding the examination of the price convergence factors.

The purpose of this article on the policy legacies from Australia’s early telecommunications history is not to present a counterfactual to Australia’s choice of public monopoly provision of early telecommunications services, but rather to indicate the extent that politics limited the private sector’s role in deploying early telegraph and telephone infrastructure in Australia. The article begins by outlining a theoretical framework for analysing government’s role in deploying new telecommunications technologies, before investigating some of the less familiar literature on the historical impact of government intervention on the private sector in the early Australian telegraph and telephone industries. It then discusses some of the political issues relating to the subsequent liberalisation of the telecommunications industry in Australia and concludes with a discussion of the historical legacies of government intervention on the private sector in the Australian telecommunications industry.

The aim of conceptual article is to consider the available literature regarding associations between the role of vested interests and its impacts on anti-corruption measures in Indonesia. Research ...

This article investigates the effects of air transport liberalisation on economic freedom and air connectivity, and the extended effects on economic development. A PLS path modelling estimator, applied to annual data for 52 countries over the period 2011–2019, shows that aviation liberalisation promotes economic freedom and improves air connectivity. The results also reveal that the economic contribution of air transport liberalisation varies across African countries and regions, relative to their levels of economic freedom and air connectivity. It is concluded that removing barriers to trade using air transport, combined with institutions that support economic freedom and the quality of air connectivity, may foster countries’ economic development.

The policies pursued by the state affect many of the phenomena that are related to the agricultural sector and in turn are reflected in the interests of those associated with this sector and the efficient use of its resources. With the shift towards liberalizing agricultural policy in general and the relationship between owners and tenants of agricultural land in particular, this study aims to shed light on what accompanied this transformation that have affected the tenure structure, whether in the number of holdings or their capacity or the extent of their fragmentation and their fair distribution and classification between ownership and rent. Depending on the data derived from the results of the holding of inventory for the two periods (1993-1997) and (2013-2016) in the Directorate of Agriculture, Assiut Governorate. The results of the study indicate that the new liberalization policy was accompanied by an increase in the number of agricultural holdings between the two study periods by about 19.2%, a decrease in the area occupied by about 2.24%, and a reduction in the average holding Size by about 20.38%, The results also indicate an increase of the number of dwarf holdings at the expense of both medium and large holdings, as the first increased from 49.55% to 56.03%, at the expense of the decrease in the number of medium holdings from 46.82% to 39.65%, and the decrease in the number of large holdings from 3.63% to 3.58% Likewise, t

Fiscal policy and the harmonization of tax laws are extremely important in order to prevent distortions of free competition in UE. The process of European Union construction is based on integration and liberalization of markets in order a loyal and free competition. This issue is really important in order to crisis superaction. In this context the fiscal policy has a very significant impact on countries economics in EU and on company’s management, especially for those most exposed to globalization. The impact of taxes on free competition, economic growth and employment is quite evident since the EU foundation. So, it would be expected a more significant progress towards fiscal harmonization among EU countries. However, until now the question of tax harmonization had no results. It remains a sensitive question in EU. Almost two decades after the entry of the Euro, after a deep economic crisis that endangered the European project, face to BREXIT, we raised some questions as base to this work: what are the political and institutional limitations to tax harmonization in EU? Why there are no further progress was made in the field of tax harmonization, at least, in company’s income? How does this affect social cohesion? What are the effects on economic and social cohesion? This study intends to reflect on the political and institutional constraints of the tax harmonization, quite necessary to the effective process of economic and social integration within the EU. As methodology, we will use a comparative study about income taxes in several EU countries and the relation to GDP, as well the deductive method to analyze the results we find and some reference studies on the subject. In conclusion, we will present the analyze the results and try to answer to these questions. With this study we pretend give a contribution in order to find an answer to the investigation questions.