Implications of Mandatory Registration of Mobile Phone Users in Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa ranks among the top regions in terms of growth in the number of mobile phone users. The success of mobile telephony is attributed to the opening of markets for private players and lenient regulatory policy. However, markets may be increasingly saturated and new regulations introduced across Africa could also have a negative impact on future growth. Since 2006, the majority of countries in the region have introduced mandatory registration of users of prepaid SIM cards with their personal identity details. This potentially increases the costs of using mobile telephony. I present a fixed effects model for the estimation of the impact of mandatory registration on mobile penetration growth, which is based upon a panel dataset of 32 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa for the years 2000 to 2010. The results show that the introduction of mandatory registration depresses growth in mobile penetration.Telecommunication, government policy, consumer protection, privacy

Do we need a European Directive for Credit Reporting?

Kreditsicherung, EU-Bankrecht, Europäische Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion, Credit risk collateralization, EU bank law, European Economic and Monetary Union

Financial Services for the Poor: Lack of Personal Identification Documents Impedes Access

Without a birth certificate, no identity card can be issued and without identity card, there is no access to formal financial services. This link seems to be trivial in industrialized countries, where the ability of the individual to participate in economic life is rarely hindered by a lack of identification. In many developing countries, however, access to financial services is often denied, because potential customers cannot be identified based upon official identity documents-a basic due diligence requirement under international anti-money laundering regulations. In many developing and emerging countries, poor people have no opportunity to obtain such documents, as a large portion of the population has not been registered at birth. Without a birth certificate, however, no identity card can be issued, which is required by banks for customer identity verification. To date, the problem of identification has not played a prominent role in research concerning access to financial services. In the past, researchers have primarily focused on microfinance. In order to expand access to formal financial services, new methods for customer identification must be developed which address the realities in developing countries. Initial steps to expand access for the poor population have already been taken in countries such as India and South Africa. Aside from addressing problems associated with missing identification, it is also necessary to introduce basic financial products such as micro accounts, where the low risk associated with them is taken into account. Less demanding identification means for low-risk financial products ought to be internationally recognized and instituted in order to dispel legal ambiguities.

Credit Reporting, Access to Finance and Identification Systems: International Evidence

Credit reporting systems are an important ingredient for financial markets. These systems are based upon the unique identification of borrowers, which is enabled if a compulsory identification system exists in a country. We present evidence derived from difference-in-difference analyses on the impact of the interplay of credit reporting and identification systems on financial access and intermediation in 172 countries during years of 2000 to 2008. Our results suggest that the introduction of an identification system has a positive effect on financial intermediation (bank credit to deposits) and financial access (private credit to GDP), especially in countries where there is also a credit reporting system. This effect exists net of other country characteristics.Credit markets, information asymmetries, identification

Horizontal and Vertical Analysis of Privacy and Cyber-Security Markets

Deliverable 4.2 (\u201cHorizontal and Vertical Analysis of Privacy and Cyber-Security Markets\u201d) provides an in-depth discussion of economic incentives, stakeholder engagement and market opportunities in privacy and cyber-security. This report first introduces the reader to the horizontal market analysis, which covers firms active at the same stage of the production chain in the privacy and cyber-security industry and present key market segmentations.The report also presents the vertical analysis of players at different stages of the production chain in the PACS industry. These relations are covered as security in the supply chain is of utmost importance: only secure inputs ensure a secure product as final output. The report also covers engagement and assessment of stakeholders in the privacy and security chain and their relation to PACS in the ICT sector. The report gives several case studies on vertical relations and includes an empirical analysis of incentive schemes. The proposed innovation value chain connects inputs and outputs in the production of PACS goods and services and their relation to economic incentives.Finally, a preliminary scheme on mapping privacy and personal data product and service markets is proposed. Firms active in these markets can be categorized according to their generic value chain, where some use the identification of the user as key input and others do not. The report provides economic incentive templates that enable market players and regulators to potentially better map the markets.The following scheme outlines in brief the relation of the two deliverables D4.1 and D4.2 to the developed Privacy and Cyber-Security Market Scheme. It enables the reader to see what is covered in the different deliverables and to what deliverable he/she needs to turn in order to find the information of interest

Stakeholder Engagement and Integration into the Framework

This document is an IPACSO service document for the European Commission. It\u2019s main purpose is to outline the contribution and integration of work package 4 into the IPACSO framework. Moreover, it explains stakeholder engagement and the economic incentivization techniques for enabling the adoption of the IPACSO framework. Due to the fact that such incentivization is not directly related to a market and incentives analysis, it was set aside in order to obtain an extra document (deliverable), which is also explicitly mentioned in the IPACSO Description of Work

The Marketplace for Privacy-Related Products and Services

With the large-scale deployment of Information and Communication Technologies markets for products and services related to personal data and privacy are thriving. Yet, to date, there has been little effort to systematically map these markets. In this IPACSO White Paper, a methodology is proposed that enables a systematic horizontal as well as vertical analysis of markets for personal data and privacy-related products and services. This method is applied to classify some of the major players active in these markets

What Is Special in the Economics of Cybersecurity and Privacy?

One of the most popular questions in information security economics is whether there are any special features relating to privacy and cyber-security products and services that separate these from traditional goods, like apples or cars. This paper is a contribution to this discussion. First, different goods and services are compared to assess whether privacy and cyber-security are in fact different. Although basic, it is enlightening. We then discuss how economics treats key features and whether the observed differences justify any \u2018special\u2019 terminology

Information Sharing and Cross-border Entry in European Banking

Information asymmetries can severely limit cross-border border expansion of banks. When a bank enters a new market, it has incomplete information about potential new clients. Such asymmetries are reduced by credit registers, which distribute financial data on bank clients. We investigate the interaction of credit registers and bank entry modes (in form of branching and M&A) by using a new set of time series cross-section data for the EU-27 countries. We study how the presence of public and private credit registers and the type of information exchanged affect bank entry modes during the period 1990-2007. Our analysis shows that the existence of both types of registers increases the share of branching in the overall entries. Additionally, the establishment of public registers reduces concentration ratios, and some banking competition indicators (such as overhead costs/assets). The introduction of a private credit bureau, on the other hand, has no effect on concentration ratios, but positively contributes to competition (by decreasing interest rate margins). This suggests that credit registers facilitate direct entry through a reduction of information asymmetries, which in turn intensifies competition.credit registries, foreign entry, asymmetric information

Access to Credit Information Promotes Market Entries of European Banks

When granting credit, banks depend on reliable information about the creditworthiness and risk structure of potential borrowers. This information is typically gathered by national credit bureaus. Nationally established banks depend on information from credit bureaus more than ever, particularly when entering a foreign market. This DIW study (which is partially based upon research by the same authors for the European Credit Research Institute and data collected by the institute) investigates whether the existence of credit bureaus influences European bank competition and concludes that they facilitate market entry for foreign banks. In turn, the absence of credit bureaus can create significant disadvantages in competition. In this case, a market entry is then primarily possible via the purchase of an incumbent bank, because the entering institution has essentially no other opportunity to access debtor data. This study also shows that provision of data within the EU is not harmonized overall.Credit registers, Foreign entry asymmetric information