Tendering Universal Service Obligations in Liberalized Network Industries

In the past decades, several countries have introduced reverse auctions for allocating universal service or public mission subsidies in various industries. Examples include urban transport, air transport and telecommunications. Recently, such mechanisms have also been envisioned in liberalized postal markets. Issuing an invitation to tender for obligations in otherwise liberalized markets significantly differs from auctioning off a monopolistic provision of services or goods (competition for the market), as is e.g. the case with spectrum auctions in the telecommunications sector. We discuss the rationale for introducing such a regulatory regime as well as conceptual and practical issues concerning its implementation. It turns out that designing an efficient tender for universal service subsidies in liberalized markets is considerably more difficult than tendering e.g. a monopoly franchise. A first reason is that the cost assessment is more complex in the former case as future competitive market outcomes have to be anticipated; in the case with franchise bidding, at least the number of competitors is given by the tender itself. Hence, revenue effects caused by competitors are easier to calculate. Second, the threat of a winner’s moral hazard requires more detailed ex ante regulations. These raise the social cost of universal service provision. Compared to direct designation of universal services with ex post compensation, tendering causes a series of fundamental concerns and trade-offs that make the application of auctions less attractive than in other sectors.Procurement, Tendering, Reverse Auctions, Universal Service Obligation, Liberalization, Network Industries

The Efficiency and Stability of Banks and Markets

Traditionally, financial systems have been bank-based or market-based. The efficiency properties of these systems are compared in various dimensions. These include risk sharing, information provision, funding new industries, corporate governance, and law, finance and politics. Both systems have advantages and disadvantages. With regard to stability, both bank-based and market-based systems are subject to crises. Going forward a financial system with financial intermediaries and markets would have many advantages and few disadvantages.

Regulation of securities markets : some recent trends and their implications for emerging markets

Recent rapid changes in the world economy, particularly the transformation of command economies into free market economies in many places around the world, can be expected to lead to an increase in the number of newly created securities markets through the 1990s. This follows a decade of unprecedented change in the world's securities markets. In the 1990s, it is expected that increased attention will be given to newly established and emerging securities markets as a result of the historic movement toward free market economies in central Europe and the Soviet Union and the need for more efficient capital markets to support the expanding role of the private sector in many developing countries around the world. Given the importance of the regulatory environment to capital market development, this paper focuses on the regulatory issues. It examines the interplay between regulation and market efficiency and reviews recent development in regulation, paying particular attention to the experience in the Korean market in the 1980s.Environmental Economics&Policies,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Insurance Law,Markets and Market Access,Financial Intermediation

Institutional investors and corporate governance

The growing dominance of equity holdings by institutional investors, both domestic and international, is casting a sharp focus on their activities and owners and monitors of firms. It is suggested that whereas some general considerations arise in all cases, it is useful to separate discussion of the developments in the Anglo Saxon countries and continental Europe/Japan. The former is showing an increase in direct influence of institutions in place of the previous reliance on the takeover mechanism to discipline managers. This has arguably led to improved corporate performance. The latter remain more firmly in the bank-relationship based governance paradigm. On the other hand, such differences should not be exaggerated, and some convergence is discernible on a modified form of the Anglo Saxon paradigm where institutions are the primary actors in corporate governance generally. In Europe, EMU will provide a major spur to such convergence

Large-scale Multi-item Auctions : Evidence from Multimedia-supported Experiments

This book presents two experimental studies that deal with the comparison of multi-item auction designs for two specific applications: the sale of 2.6 GHz radio spectrum rights in Europe, and the sale of emissions permits in Australia. In order to tackle the complexity of these experiments, a cognitively based toolkit is proposed, including modularized video instructions, comprehension tests, a learning platform, a graphical one-screen user interface, and comprehension-based group matching

Privatising Network Industries

privatization, regulation, competition, telecoms, electricity, gas, water, rail

Signalling in auctions: experimental evidence

We study the relative performance of the first-price sealed-bid auction, the second-price sealed-bid auction, and the all-pay sealed-bid auction in a laboratory experiment where bidders can signal information through their bidding behaviour to an outside observer. We consider two different information settings: the auctioneer reveals either the identity of the winning bidder only, or she also reveals the bidders’ payments to an outside observer. We find that the all-pay sealed-bid auction in which the bidders’ payments are revealed outperforms the other mechanisms in terms of revenue, while this mechanism underperforms in terms of efficiency relative to the winner-pay auctions

Impact of M & A on firm performance in India: Implications for concentration of ownership and insider entrenchment

performance. On the one hand, concentration of ownership that, in turn, concentrates management control in the hands of a strategic investor, eliminates agency problems associated with dispersed ownership. On the other hand, it may lead to entrenchment of upper management which may be inconsistent with the objective of profit (or value) maximisation. This paper examines the impact of M & A on profitability of firms in India, where the corporate landscape is dominated by family-owned and group-affiliated businesses, such that alignment of management and ownership coexists with management entrenchment, and draws conclusions about the impact of concentrated ownership and entrenchment of ownermanagers on firm performance. Our results indicate that, during the 1995-2002 period, M & A in India led to deterioration in firm performance. We also find that neither the investors in the equity market nor the debt holders can be relied upon to discipline errant (and entrenched) management. In other words, on balance, negative effects of entrenchment of ownermanagers trumps the positive effects of reduction in owner-vs.-manager agency problems. Our findings are consistent with bulk of the existing literature on family-owned and group affiliated firms in India.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64396/1/wp907.pd