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Two prominent features in current world affairs are the unprecedented level of global economic integration and the growing incidence of intrastate violence. We develop and test a novel argument linking global integration through foreign investment to intrastate armed conflict. The presence of multinational corporations in developing countries can cause market concentration, resulting in high rents. Disputes between governments and would-be challengers over the appropriation of these rents are likely to turn violent, increasing the incidence of armed conflict. State capacity mitigates this positive association between foreign investment and intrastate war. Strong states have the capacity to deter rebellions, address citizens’ demands through institutionalized mechanisms, and credibly commit to the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Using data from developing countries for over four decades and addressing potential endogeneity and selection biases, we find strong support for our hypotheses. Our findings have important implications for understanding the link between economic interdependence and conflict.

Background In the past decade, physician practices have merged into larger group practices (i.e., horizontal consolidation) and have been acquired by hospitals and health systems (i.e., vertical consolidation), leaving fewer practices independent. The implications of these changes can be profound, affecting the prices for and spending on physician services, access to care, patients’ choice of providers, and quality of care. Methods We used IQVIA data on orthopedic surgeon practice sites that included information on health system or hospital ownership, group medical practice participation, number of physicians, and average patient volume. We calculated the number and size of group medical practices as measures of horizontal consolidation and the percentage of practice sites owned by a health system or hospital as a measure of vertical consolidation. We also calculated the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) to measure market concentration. Results We found significant horizontal and vertical consolidation nationally and across all regions of the United States. This consolidation has led to much more concentrated markets, as measured by HHI, for orthopedic surgeon services. These trends are consistent with studies looking at consolidation of other types of providers. Conclusion Orthopedic surgeon practices, like other provider types, have consolidated at a rapid rate over the past decade. A variety of factors may have contributed, including the move away from fee-for-service to alternative payment arrangements, changes in Medicare payment policies, private equity activity, and evolving physician preferences. Due to the potential impacts of this consolidation, more research is needed to examine some of these contributing factors.

This study aims to analyze the structure of the Lemuru fish market that was formed in Muncar District, Banyuwangi Regency. There are two groups of respondents, fishermen (61 people) and marketing agencies (25 people). The sampling method used random sampling and slovin calculations to determine the number of fishermen respondents, the sample of marketing institutions used the snowball sampling method. To determine the market structure, the analysis used is the identification of the number of marketing institutions, market concentration using market share and CR4, product differentiation, and barriers to market entry. The results show that there are two marketing channels. Marketing channel one consists of 50 fishermen, five collectors, and seven retailers. Channel two consists of 11 fishermen and 13 retailers. From the analysis of market concentration using market share and CR4 at the fisherman and retailer level, a perfect competition market and a monopoly competition market at the collector level are formed. There is no product differentiation made by fishermen, collectors, and retailers. The barriers to entry and exit from the market faced by fishermen are natural and non-natural barriers, while collectors and retailers face non-natural barriers.

Globalizacija i internacionalizacija na tržištu maloprodaje dovode do povećanja tržišne koncentracije. Proces koncentracije maloprodajnog tržišta ima faze jačeg i slabijeg intenziteta. No, trend povećanja koncentracije se neprestano odvija gotovo zadnja tri desetljeća. Maloprodaja je danas postala visoko globalizirana industrija, sa snažnom i brzom dinamikom promjena ali i izazova. U radu se istražuje korelacija između razlika u tržišnim udjelima hrvatskih maloprodajnih poduzeća i njihove poslovne uspješnosti. Autor polazi od pretpostavke da razlike u tržišnom udjelu imaju statistički značajan utjecaj na razlike vezane uz sam poslovni rezultat maloprodajnih poduzeća u Republici Hrvatskoj. Istraživanje je provedeno na cijelokupnom hrvatskom tržištu maloprodaje, ali isto tako su analizirane specifičnosti i posebnosti vezane uz Kontinentalnu i Jadransku Hrvatsku. Rezultati istraživanja nedvojbeno potvrđuju da postoji značajna razlika vezana uz bruto dobiti po zaposlenom između maloprodajnih poslovnih subjekta podijeljenih u pet skupina, odnosno grupiranih u skladu s različitim tržišnim udjelima. Provedeno istraživanje također ukazuje da u Kontinentalnoj i Jadranskoj Hrvatskoj postoje specifičnosti u vezi s tim razlikama., Globalization and internationalization in the retail market result in increased market concentration. The process of concentration of the retail market has phases of stronger and weaker intensity. But the trend of increasing concentration has been takes place for almost the last three decades. Retail has today become a highly globalized industry, with strong and rapid dynamics of change but it also has challenges. The paper investigates the correlation between differences in market shares of Croatian retail companies and their business performance. The author starts from the assumption that differences in market share have a statistically significant impact on differences related to the business result of retail companies in the Republic of Croatia. The research was conducted on the entire Croatian retail market, but the specifics and peculiarities related to Continental and Adriatic Croatia were also analyzed. The results of the research undoubtedly confirm that there is a significant difference related to gross profit per employee between retail business entities divided into five groups, ie grouped according to different market shares. The conducted research also indicates that in Continental and Adriatic Croatia there are specifics regarding these differences.

Background Health care is a complex economic and social system, which combines market elements and public and social interest. This combination in Brazil, like systems in China and United States of America, is operationalized through the public and private system. The sector represents approximately 9% of the country’s GDP, of which 56% is privately sourced and 44% is of public origin. In the private sector includes a structure with 711 private health institutions, 47 million beneficiaries and revenues of US$30 billion a year. Methods Therefore, this research describes and analyzes the complementarity of Private Health before the Brazilian Unified Health System, highlighting its main characteristics, scenarios, and trends in the face of the health system and the Brazilian market. This descriptive and exploratory research uses secondary data from various sources, submitted to quantitative data analysis methods. The object of the research is the history of private health in Brazil and its main actors. Results The data are organized into three groups, each with its approach of collection and analysis. Thus, it is perceived as the notorious growth of large operators, to the detriment of operators with a lower concentration of beneficiaries; the increasing concentration of the market through mergers and acquisitions promoted by large publicly traded corporations, especially in regions with a lower rate of private health coverage; and the growth of the sector through business plans, whose central characteristic is the dependence on the country’s employability rate. Conclusions It is possible to perceive an intense trend of concentration of Brazilian private health in large institutions that have capitalized and have a great appetite for growth through mergers and acquisitions, whether from smaller operators or health institutions that integrate their health networks, following complementary health models already consolidated in countries such as China, and the United States of America, among others. This concentration projects a market with fewer options and competitiveness, reduction in transaction costs and increase the operational effectiveness of health care.

Acquisitions are competitive moves that disrupt an industry’s competitive structure. As a result, firms are often not passive observers of their rival’s acquisitions, but actively retaliate against such competitive moves. In this study, we explore these dynamics by analyzing one way in which multimarket contact may influence acquisition strategies, namely, the type of targets acquired. We contribute to the acquisition literature by clarifying the role that pre-acquisition competitive interdependencies play in firms’ acquisition strategies. Specifically, we suggest that high multimarket contact firms do not necessarily avoid acquisition activity. Instead, these firms are more likely to acquire targets that are less likely to incur retaliation from interconnected rivals. We also explore two important boundary conditions to this relationship: (1) the market’s competitive structure and (2) the location of the target firm. Our empirical tests of a sample of 741 bank holding companies from 1995 to 2014 offer support for our hypotheses.

В статье рассматриваются особенности конкурентной борьбы в банковском секторе российской экономике в период 2020-2022 гг. Характеризуется распределение банковских организаций по регионам регистрации, проводится анализ динамики объемов активов нетто по сектору в целом и по конкретным организациям. Помимо этого, выводятся доли рынка, контролируемые ведущими банковскими организациями, на основе последних рассчитываются показатели рыночной концентрации, включающие индексы CR3, CR5 и HHI. По результатам проведенного анализа делается вывод о продолжающейся тенденции к олигополизации рынка, которая состоит в усилении рыночной власти лидера (Сбербанк) и общем повышении совокупной доли, контролируемой десятью ведущими банками. В качестве ключевого драйвера дальнейшего развития отечественного банковского сектора выделяется финтех., The article discusses the features of competition in the banking sector of the Russian economy in the period 2020-2022. The distribution of banking organizations by regions of registration is characterized, the dynamics of net assets by sector as a whole and by specific organizations is analyzed. In addition, market shares controlled by leading banking organizations are derived, and market concentration indicators including CR3, CR5 and HHI indices are calculated on the basis of the latter. Based on the results of the analysis, it is concluded that there is a continuing trend towards oligopolization of the market, which consists in strengthening the market power of the leader (Sberbank) and a general increase in the aggregate share controlled by the ten leading banks. Fintech stands out as a key driver for the further development of the domestic banking sector., Экономика и предпринимательство, Выпуск 1 (150) 2023, Pages 48-51

Liner shipping is an activity of strategic importance for every country because it enables exports and imports. For that reason, in many countries the liner shipping sector has a special status compared to other sectors as it is exempted from the application of some provisions of the general competition law. The paper analyses the European Union's legal framework regulating vessel-sharing agreements between liner shipping companies known as consortia and alliances. In the European Union, Article 101(1) Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union prohibits agreements between undertakings that might restrict competition. The main characteristics of a consortium agreement are the sharing of space and the determination of port calls and schedules between the parties of the agreement. Consortia generate rationalisation, economies of scale, and significant savings for the benefit of carriers. It was considered for many years, that a fair share of these benefits was passed on to users of the shipping services. For that reason, and given the efficiencies that consortia liner shipping agreements generate regarding the provision of international maritime transport of cargo, on the EU level Consortia Block Exemption Regulation has been in force since 1995. It provides guidance with respect to the compatibility of the consortia agreements with European Union competition rules. The European Commission has extended the Consortia Block Exemption Regulation every five years. The currently applicable Consortia Block Exemption Regulation will expire in April 2024, unless the Commission further prolongs it. The Commission is assessing how the Consortia Block Exemption Regulation has been functioning since it was last prolonged in 2020. In this paper, the recent challenges in the shipping industry, such as the use of ultra-large container vessels, the functioning of consortia during the COVID-19 pandemic, the market power of consortia and alliances, digitalisation, vertical integration, increase in prices of shipping services and issues of availability and reliability of liner shipping service are analysed. Finally, arguments, pro et contra further extension of the Consortia Block Exemption Regulation will be discussed.

The U.S. food retail sector has experienced substantial change in market concentration over the last three decades. To understand how the change in concentration might impact consumers, researchers would ideally focus on geographic markets that mimic where consumers actually shop. This report investigates the changes in food retailing market concentration at the national, State, Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), and county levels in the United States from 1990 to 2019, using data from the National Establishment Time Series dataset. The research finds that food-retailing market concentration at the county level is much higher than estimates of concentration using national-level data. Food retailing markets in rural and small nonmetro counties are considerably more concentrated than food retailing markets in metro and large nonmetro counties. Further, the study documents a significant rise in food retailing market concentration in the United States over the last three decades, at the national level as well as the State, MSA, and county levels during the period. Finally, the study shows that when excluding the largest food retailer, the concentration in retailing at the national and State level, markets would have been lower, but at the MSA and county level, markets would have been higher for most of the period analyzed.

RESUMO Objetivo: avaliar a concentração em diferentes ramos do mercado segurador no Brasil e analisar seus efeitos sobre a arrecadação de prêmios e lucratividade. Há evidências de que o mercado segurador brasileiro apresenta as principais características de um oligopólio. Marco teórico: baseia-se na Organização Industrial, campo da Economia que se dedica a estudar a estrutura de mercado, importância e arranjo das firmas, além dos impactos derivados da concentração sobre a concorrência. Método: utilizam-se modelos de regressão para dados em painel. Os dados são oficiais do mercado segurador brasileiro, dispostos mensalmente entre fev./2003 e dez./2018, totalizando 82.443 observações de 135 seguradoras atuantes em 17 ramos. Para cada ramo, calcularam-se os principais índices de concentração da literatura e foram estimados seus efeitos sobre prêmios e lucros. Resultados: aumentos dos índices de concentração relacionam-se com redução da arrecadação das seguradoras, mas sem redução de lucro. No entanto, caso a seguradora esteja entre as maiores do mercado, e faça parte de algum grupo econômico, os efeitos são anulados e a concentração pode gerar aumentos de arrecadação de prêmios e lucros, sugerindo que ela exerce algum poder de mercado elevando os prêmios, reforçando a hipótese de estrutura-conduta-desempenho. Conclusões: a concentração setorial é maior nos segmentos de vida do que nos demais. As evidências apontam para as quatro maiores seguradoras do setor, com maiores arrecadações entre 2003 e 2018, detendo 90% do market share. Ademais, a arrecadação nos ramos vida, é superior a 80% da média total, concomitante a uma queda do total de players. ABSTRACT Objective: to evaluate the concentration in different Brazilian insurance lines of business (LOB) and analyze effects on premium revenues and profitability. There is evidence that the Brazilian insurance market holds the main characteristics of an oligopoly. Theoretical approach: it is based on Industrial Organization, a field of Economics that is dedicated to studying the market structure, importance, and arrangement of firms, in addition to impacts derived from concentration on competition. Method: regression models for panel data are used. The data are official from the Brazilian insurance market, arranged monthly between Feb./2003 and Dec./2018, totaling 82,443 observations from 135 insurers operating in 17 segments. For each segment, the main concentration indices in the literature were calculated and their effects on premiums and profits were estimated. Results: increases in concentration indices are related to reductions in insurance companies’ premiums revenues, but without a reduction in profits. However, if an insurer is among the market's largest, and is part of an economic group, the effects are nullified and the concentration can generate increases in premiums’ revenues and profits, suggesting that it exercises some market power by raising premiums, reinforcing the structure-conduct-performance hypothesis. Conclusions: the sectorial concentration is greater in life than in non-life LOB, with evidence pointing to the four largest insurance companies, with the highest collections between 2003 and 2018, holding 90% of the market share. In addition, the collection in the life LOB, is more than 80% of the average, concomitant with a drop in the total number of players.

Previous studies have stressed that inflation dynamics exhibit substantial dispersion across sectors. Using US producer price data, we present evidence that sectoral inflation persistence is negatively correlated with market concentration, which is difficult to reconcile with the prediction of the standard model of monopolistic competition. To better explain the data, we incorporate imperfect common knowledge into the monopolistic competition model introduced by Melitz and Ottaviano (2008). In the model, pricing complementarity among firms increases as market concentration decreases. Because higher pricing complementarity generates greater inflation persistence, our model successfully replicates the observed negative correlation between inflation persistence and market concentration across sectors.

This paper explores the effect of market concentration of the Norwegian oil production sector (NPS) on Norway's second-largest industry, the oilfield services companies (OFS). To capture this effect, we use the system generalized method of moments approach (GMM) to estimate an empirical model, spanning the period 1993–2013. The findings indicate that increased market concentration is consistent with lower profitability of the oilfield services companies, as the bargaining power of oil companies relative to service companies increases. Increased knowledge about this effect could contribute to improving strategies for the further development of these industries by stakeholders.

The objective of this paper is to determine whether commercial banks in the Southern Region of the United States are highly concentrated and hence less competitive in offering favorable lending terms to borrowers and subsequently hindering economic development in their region. The paper employs concentration measures to estimate the concentration degrees of commercial banks in the Southern Region of the United States in 2019. Data for deposits and loans plus leases of banks in 12 states in the South were collected for the year 2019 from the following sources: http://www.ofi.state.la.us/ and http://www.ibanknet.com/. Empirical results show that only commercial bank markets in Kentucky and Florida have perfect competition. The commercial banks in other ten states are either uncompetitive or less competitive, thereby creating adverse economic development environments for prospective corporate and individual borrowers in those states, and consequently impairing the profitability, stability and risk structure of the banking industry in most states covered in the Southern Region. The paper provides a value- added literature contribution to US banking market structure. The next step would be up to state and federal bank regulatory bodies to address the issue in those less competitive states and their potential on economic development in that region.

En México el sector agropecuario contribuye con cerca de 3.4% del PIB nacional, sobresaliendo la actividad hortofrutícola con 45% de las exportaciones del sector, donde el tomate rojo representa 8.41%. México es el principal proveedor a nivel mundial de este producto con una participación de 19% de las exportaciones mundiales por arriba de España o Países Bajos. El objetivo es determinar la competitividad del tomate rojo de México en el mercado internacional mediante la ventaja relativa de exportación (VRE) y la participación constante de mercado (CMS). Se encontró competitividad del producto mexicano en el mercado estadounidense y una alta concentración de mercado, enviando 98% de las exportaciones de tomate rojo mexicano hacia ese destino.

This study aims to investigate the effect of market concentration on industrial efficiency. Large and medium processing industry data in East Java and the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) approach were used to investigate the impact of market concentration on the efficiency of the industry. The results of the study indicate that market concentration in the processing industry in East Java leads to oligopoly. The variable of firm size (FSize) and the level of market concentration (CR4) have a negative effect on the level of technical efficiency of large and medium industries in East Java.

Investment is an important contributor to aggregate demand, and it is critical to fostering productivity and fueling innovation. Absent from the existing literature on business investment is the recognition that the determinants of investment have changed over time in fundamental ways. Using quarterly data from 1953–2016, we estimate an augmented accelerator function of U.S. business investment and present evidence of a structural change in the year 2000. Our findings suggest that while the accelerator and crowding-out effects have weakened over time, the sensitivity of investment growth to cost of capital, risk spread, cash flows, and economic policy uncertainty have increased in recent years. In light of these results, we highlight and evaluate several recent hypotheses regarding structural changes in the U.S. economy. In particular, we argue that our results are not consistent with the secular stagnation hypothesis, but are more closely connected to long-term trends in demographics, market concentration, financialization, and the inter-industry reconfiguration of firms away from traditional manufacturing.

Several recent studies show that market concentration in the US has increased over time, with firm profits increasing in the same period. The consistency of findings from the US is contrasted by more varying results from studies of the development of market concentration in Europe. In this study, we utilise the completeness of Norwegian microdata to investigate how methodological choices and data limitations impact results with respect to the market concentration and its relationship with profitability. First, we find that concentration in Norway has decreased slightly over the last two decades. Over the same period, profitability has increased slightly for two profitability measures and been stable for the other two. Despite a difference in overall trends, at the industry level, we find a positive and statistically significant relationship between concentration and profitability for three out of four profitability measures, in line with the market power hypothesis. Investigating the effect of methodological choices and data limitations, we find that concentration trends are quite robust to exclusion of smaller companies, the incorporation of ownership structures in concentration measures and the choice of industry classification. However, the positive relationship between concentration and profitability is almost non-existent when using readily available industry classification instead of more product market-oriented industry classifications and disappears completely when we do not exclude export-oriented industries. Our study is relevant for future research, as well as for policymakers, as our results indicate that one should be careful when interpreting results from studies of market concentration that fail to handle these methodological challenges.

Purpose Fears over public accounting becoming increasingly concentrated have inspired several attempts to study the relationship between competition and audit quality. These studies have yielded conflicting results without a clear reason as to why. This paper aims to propose a new approach and empirically demonstrate a non-monotonic association between competition and audit quality. Design/methodology/approach Using metropolitan statistical area level data from the USA over the period of 2000–2014, the author shows that the effect that changes in the competition will have on audit quality depends upon the current competitive state of the market. Findings Audit quality is at its highest level when competition is neither too high nor too low. In addition, the point of inflection at which competition turns from being helpful to harmful is influenced by the saturation of the Big 4 auditors in the market. Practical implications These findings can help explain the mixed results of the literature and provide insight into the role that regulators can play in modulating competition. Originality/value This is the first paper to document a non-monotonic relationship between competition and audit quality. By introducing and exploring the validity of a non-monotonic component in the audit quality equation, the authors can better determine, which competitive structures generate desired levels of audit quality.

Publisher Copyright: © 2021, The Author(s). The relationship between innovation and competition has been vastly studied over the past fifty years. However, one piece of the puzzle that has not been studied in detail is how in certain industries competition has an effect in the number of products that are removed from the market. That is why in this paper, I use scanner data to analyze the effect of competition on product removal. In particular, I track sales in the beer industry across a set of 1107 over a period of four years. Following previous studies, I use the merger between SABMiller and Molson Coors as an unexpected change in the industry to estimate future market concentration. I find that there is a negative relationship between removal and concentration. Therefore, retailers decide to remove products from their shelves in a faster way when the market is more competitive to open the gates for a more dynamic assortment.

In this paper, we study the effect of different types of technological regime changes on the evolution of industry concentration and wage inequality. Using a calibrated agent-based macroeconomic framework, the Eurace@Unibi model, we consider scenarios where the new regime is characterized by a finite time period of more frequent respectively more substantial changes in the frontier technology compared to the old regime. We show that under both scenarios, the regime change leads to an increase in the heterogeneity of productivity in the firm population and to increased market concentration, where effects are much less pronounced if the new regime differs from the old one with respect to the frequency of innovations. If the new regime is characterized by an increase of the size of the frontier jumps along the technological trajectory, the evolution of the wage inequality has an inverted U-shape with a large fraction of workers profiting in the very long run from high wages offered by dominant high-tech firms. Finally, it is shown that (observable) heterogeneity of worker skills plays an important role in generating these dynamic effects of technological regime changes.

The Chicago School believes that more efficient firms will earn higher profits, leading to higher market concentration. How does this apply to situations in specific industrial environments? The output value and import and export volume of China’s wooden furniture industry rank among the highest in the world, but the industry’s profit growth rate is decreasing. Is this phenomenon caused by a problem in the growth mode of the industry itself? It is especially important to understand the real characteristics of the industry. The purpose of this study is to discover the characteristics and trends of China’s wooden furniture industry and to clarify the direction of the future development of the industry. Market concentration index, data envelopment analysis and Engel-Granger cointegration test were applied to this study respectively. Based on the theory of industrial organization, this study conducted an empirical analysis in three stages. The results show that China’s wooden furniture industry is still a labor-intensive industry, the increase in market concentration mainly depends on the expansion of the labor force, and there is a conflict between industrial technological progress and scale expansion. It has also been confirmed in theory that the market structure is affected by efficiency. However, the way and degree of impact depend on the level of industrial development. This study can provide a reference for the formulation and adjustment of macro policies for industrial development, improve the understanding of industry characteristics and trends at the enterprise level to help enterprises achieve transformation, and offer international and domestic investors a reference point for investment decisions at the market level. This study combines macro-level "industry" with micro-level "enterprise" to make the study more comprehensive and systematic, and fills in the gaps in related research in the field.

We develop a unifying framework to investigate the effects of firms’ internet presence on productivity and market structure. Using information on website adoption as an indicator of online trading, we treat the decision of entering an e-commerce market equivalent to the decision of entering a foreign market. Our theoretical framework draws from a dynamic model of international trade, which accounts for firms’ heterogeneity in productivity levels and in the returns to productivity enhancing investments. We test the predictions of our model using UK and Spanish company account data, over the 1995-2010 period merged with information of companies’ online status. The period analysed is associated with the early stage of internet diffusion and our sample countries represent fast (the UK) and slow (Spain) diffusion. Our results show that website adoption is associated with higher productivity growth and with a reduction in market concentration in both countries. The increase in competition operates via a negative selection mechanism, whereby productivity growth is inversely related to the pre-entry productivity levels. We also find that productivity gains decline over time.