Regional Financial Development and Bank Competition: Effects on Firms' Growth

This paper analyzes the effect of regional financial development and bank competition on firms’ growth using the Spanish provinces as a testing ground. Our results show that firms in industries with a greater dependence on external finance grow faster in more financially developed provinces. The results also show that bank monopoly power has an inverted-U effect on firms’ growth, suggesting that market power has its highest effect at intermediate values. The effect is heterogeneous among firms according to the financial dependence of the industry they belong to. This result is consistent with the literature on relationship banking which argues that bank competition can have a negative effect on the availability of finance for more informationally opaque firms.economic growth; regional financial development; bank competition

The cost of market power in banking: social welfare loss vs. inefficiency cost

This paper analyses the relationship between market power in the loan and deposit markets and efficiency in the EU15 countries over 1993-2002. Results show the existence of a positive relationship between market power and cost X-efficiency, allowing rejection of the so-called quiet life hypothesis (Berger and Hannan, 1998). The social welfare loss attributable to market power in 2002 represented 0.54% of the GDP of the EU15. Results show that the welfare gains associated with a reduction of market power are greater than the loss of bank cost efficiency, showing the importance of economic policy measures aimed at removing the barriers to outside competition.market power, welfare loss, X-inefficiency, banking

Banking competition, financial dependence and economic growth

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effect of financial development and banking competition on economic growth using both structural measures of competition (market concentration) and measures based on the new empirical industrial organization perspective (Panzar and Rosse`s test and the Lerner index). The evidence obtained in the period 1993-2003 for a sample of 53 sectors in 21 countries indicates that financial development and the exercise of bank market power promote economic growth. The latter result is consistent with the literature on relationship lending which argues that bank competition can have a negative effect on the availability of finance for companies that are informationally more opaque. The results cast doubt on the use of market concentration measures as indicators of competition.economic growth; financial development; bank competition

Factors Explaining the Interest Margin in the Banking Sectors of the European Union

This study analyses the interest margin in the principal European banking sectors (Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain) in the period 1993-2000 using a panel of 15,888 observations, identifying the fundamental elements affecting this margin. Our starting point is the methodology developed in the original study by Ho and Saunders (1981) and later extensions, but widened to take banks’ operating costs explicitly into account. Also, unlike the usual practice in the literature, a direct measure of the degree of competition (Lerner index) in the different markets is used. The results show that the fall of margins in the European banking system is compatible with a relaxation of the competitive conditions (increase in market power and concentration), as this effect has been counteracted by a reduction of interest rate risk, credit risk, and operating costs.margins, competition

Regional financial development and bank competition: effects on economic growth

Many studies have analysed the effect of financial development and bank competition on economic growth from a cross-country perspective. However, to our knowledge, no paper has analysed the effect of these two financial variables on growth at regional level. This paper examines the case of the Spanish regions in an attempt to fill this gap. Our results show that firms in industries with a greater dependence on external finance grow faster in more developed financial regions. The results also show that bank monopoly power has an inverted-U effect on economic growth, suggesting that market power has its highest effect at intermediate values. The effect is heterogeneous among firms according to the financial dependence of the industry they belong to. This result is consistent with the literature on relationship banking which argues that bank competition can have a negative effect on the availability of finance for more informationally opaque firms.economic growth; regional financial development; bank competition

Optimal Real-Time Bidding Strategies

The ad-trading desks of media-buying agencies are increasingly relying on complex algorithms for purchasing advertising inventory. In particular, Real-Time Bidding (RTB) algorithms respond to many auctions -- usually Vickrey auctions -- throughout the day for buying ad-inventory with the aim of maximizing one or several key performance indicators (KPI). The optimization problems faced by companies building bidding strategies are new and interesting for the community of applied mathematicians. In this article, we introduce a stochastic optimal control model that addresses the question of the optimal bidding strategy in various realistic contexts: the maximization of the inventory bought with a given amount of cash in the framework of audience strategies, the maximization of the number of conversions/acquisitions with a given amount of cash, etc. In our model, the sequence of auctions is modeled by a Poisson process and the \textit{price to beat} for each auction is modeled by a random variable following almost any probability distribution. We show that the optimal bids are characterized by a Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation, and that almost-closed form solutions can be found by using a fluid limit. Numerical examples are also carried out

Signalling DNA Damage

During our lifetime, the genome is constantly being exposed to different types of damage caused either by exogenous sources (radiations and/or genotoxic compound) but also as byproducts of endogenous processes (reactive oxigen species during respiration, stalled forks during replication, eroded telomeres, etc). From a structural point of view, there are many types of DNA damage including single or double strand breaks, base modifications and losses or base-pair mismatches. The amount of lesions that we face is enormous with estimates suggesting that each of our 1013 cells has to deal with around 10.000 lesions per day [1]. While the majority of these events are properly resolved by specialized mechanisms, a deficient response to DNA damage, and particularly to DSB, harbors a serious threat to human health [2]. DSB can be formed [1] following an exposure to ionizing radiation (X- or γ-rays) or clastogenic drugs; [2] endogenously, during DNA replication, or [3], as a consequence of reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated during oxidative metabolism. In addition, programmed DSB are used as repair intermediates during V(D)J and Class-Switch recombination (CSR) in lymphocytes [3], or during meiotic recombination [4]. Because of this, immunodeficiency and/or sterility problems are frequently associated with DDR-related pathologies

A Stand–Alone Quantized State System Solver for Continuous System Simulation

This article introduces a stand-alone implementation of the quantized state system (QSS) integration methods for continuous and hybrid system simulation. QSS methods replace the time discretization of classic numerical integration by the quantization of the state variables. These algorithms lead to discrete event approximations of the original continuous systems and show some advantages over classic numerical integration schemes. For simplicity, most implementations of QSS methods were confined to discrete event simulation engines. The problem is that they were not fully efficient, as they wasted much of the computational load in the discrete event simulation mechanism. The stand-alone QSS solver presented here overcomes this problem, improving in more than one order of magnitude the computation times of the previous discrete event implementations. Besides describing the solver structure and functionality, the article analyzes four different models and compares the performance of the new solver with that of the discrete event implementation, and with that of different classic solvers.Fil: Kofman, Ernesto Javier. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Rosario. Centro Internacional Franco Argentino de Ciencias de la Información y Sistemas; ArgentinaFil: Fernandez, Joaquin. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Rosario. Centro Internacional Franco Argentino de Ciencias de la Información y Sistemas; Argentin

Food Safety Management in a Global Environment: The Role of Risk Assessment Models

Quantitative risk assessment models are playing a minor role in the development of the new EU legal framework for food safety. There is a tendency of the EU institutions to apply the precautionary principle versus the predisposition of the USA institutions to rely on risk analysis. This paper provides a comparison of the role played by quantitative risk assessment models in the development of new policies on food safety in the EU and in the USA, focusing on a study case: the supply chain of shell eggs. We suggest that EU regulatory bodies should reconsider the role that quantitative risk assessment models have to play in order to design more effective food safety management systems.Food safety policy, food safety assurance, risk analysis, risk assessment, precautionary principle, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,