Is There a Path for Green Growth? Evidence from India

This paper uses historical temperature fluctuations in India to identify its effects on economic growth rates. Using a climate-adjusted form of the Solow growth model, I find that one degree Celsius increase in temperature decreases GDP per capita growth by 0.71%. This finding informs debates over the role of climate on economic development and suggests the possibility of a green path for economic growth, a policy agenda that is both sustainable and pro-growth

Banking Market Liberalization and Bank Performance: the Role of Entry Modes

This paper analyzes the evolution in bank performance following the removal of legal restrictions on the entry of foreign banks in three transition economies: the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. Two modes of foreign bank entry are considered: entry by Greenfield investments, and by foreign mergers and acquisitions of domestic banks. For this purpose, we construct a panel data of banks from the three countries over the period 1994-2004. We determine the dates on which liberalization occurred in each country. Bank performance is reflected by accounting measures of profitability, net interest margin, and operating costs. The results show a very limited effect of the entry of Greenfield banks on domestic banking market in the early transition period. In contrast, the foreign entry by mergers and acquisitions of domestic banks exerts significant impacts on bank performance. Indeed, we observe significant declines in banks' profits and net interest margins, and a significant increase in operating costs. Our results have important policy implications for those emerging and transition economies still hesitant to liberalize their banking markets.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64408/1/wp948.pd

Banking Market Liberalization and Bank Performance: the Role of Entry Modes

This paper analyzes the evolution in bank performance following the removal of legal restrictions on the entry of foreign banks in three transition economies: the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. Two modes of foreign bank entry are considered: entry by Greenfield investments, and by foreign mergers and acquisitions of domestic banks. For this purpose, we construct a panel data of banks from the three countries over the period 1994-2004. We determine the dates on which liberalization occurred in each country. Bank performance is reflected by accounting measures of profitability, net interest margin, and operating costs. The results show a very limited effect of the entry of Greenfield banks on domestic banking market in the early transition period. In contrast, the foreign entry by mergers and acquisitions of domestic banks exerts significant impacts on bank performance. Indeed, we observe significant declines in banks' profits and net interest margins, and a significant increase in operating costs. Our results have important policy implications for those emerging and transition economies still hesitant to liberalize their banking markets.Banking, Transition Economies, Foreign Bank Entry, Greenfield Investment, Mergers and Acquisitions, Bank Performance.

Does the Entry Mode of Foreign Banks Matter for Bank Efficiency? Evidence from the Czech Republic,Hungary, and Poland

This paper investigates the impact of specific modes of entry of foreign banks, i.e. greenfield investment versus merger and acquisition, on bank performance in three transition economies ñ the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. We use stochastic frontier analysis to model and measure the cost efficiency of banks. We adopt a maximum likelihood approach to estimation in which the variance of the one-sided error term is modeled jointly with the cost frontier, thus enabling us to retrieve efficiency scores, as well as estimating the various determinants of X-inefficiency. We first find that foreign banks are generally more cost efficient than their domestic counterparts, a result that confirms those of the existing empirical literature. We then turn our focus to comparative performance of greenfield banks versus merger and acquisition banks (M & As), and of M & As versus domestic banks. The results show that on average, M & As are surpassed in terms of efficiency by greenfields banks, but no cost efficiency difference is apparent between M & As and domestic banks. However, we find a strong age effect with respect to M & As which suggests that the evolution of M & Así efficiency follows an inverse U-shape, that means M & As tend to get more inefficient following the acquisition, but approximately 4 years and a haft later, their efficiency starts to improve.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64431/1/wp925.pd

A Complete Solver for Constraint Games

Game Theory studies situations in which multiple agents having conflicting objectives have to reach a collective decision. The question of a compact representation language for agents utility function is of crucial importance since the classical representation of a $n$-players game is given by a $n$-dimensional matrix of exponential size for each player. In this paper we use the framework of Constraint Games in which CSP are used to represent utilities. Constraint Programming --including global constraints-- allows to easily give a compact and elegant model to many useful games. Constraint Games come in two flavors: Constraint Satisfaction Games and Constraint Optimization Games, the first one using satisfaction to define boolean utilities. In addition to multimatrix games, it is also possible to model more complex games where hard constraints forbid certain situations. In this paper we study complete search techniques and show that our solver using the compact representation of Constraint Games is faster than the classical game solver Gambit by one to two orders of magnitude.Comment: 17 page