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Daily Archives: August 21, 2013

Measuring bank competition in China

Measuring bank competition in China: a comparison of new versus conventional approaches applied to loan markets, by Bing Xu, Adrian Van Rixtel and Michiel van Leuvensteijn. Working Papers No 422. August 2013. Bank for International Settlement.

“Since the 1980s, important and progressive reforms have profoundly reshaped the structure of the Chinese banking system. Many empirical studies suggest that financial reform promoted bank competition in most mature and emerging economies. However, some earlier studies that adopted conventional approaches to measure competition concluded that bank competition in China declined during the past decade, despite these reforms. In this paper, we show both empirically and theoretically that this apparent contradiction is the result of flawed measurement. Conventional indicators such as the Lerner index and Panzar-Rosse H-statistic fail to measure competition in Chinese loan markets properly due to the system of interest rate regulation. By contrast, the relatively new Profit Elasticity (PE) approach that was introduced in Boone (2008) as Relative Profit Differences (RPD) does not suffer from these shortcomings. Using balance sheet information for a large sample of banks operating in China during 1996-2008, we show that competition actually increased in the past decade when the PE indicator is used. We provide additional empirical evidence that supports our results. We find that these firstly are in line with the process of financial reform, as measured by several indices, and secondly are robust for a large number of alternative specifications and estimation methods. All in all, our analysis suggests that bank lending markets in China have been more competitive than previously assumed.”

FISA court ruling on illegal NSA e-mail collection program

Washington Post – Ellen Nakashima, “The National Security Agency unlawfully gathered as many as tens of thousands of e-mails and other electronic communications between Americans as part of a now-discontinued collection program, according to a 2011 secret court opinion [redacted]. The 86-page opinion, which was declassified by U.S. intelligence officials Wednesday, explains why the chief… Continue Reading

Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee, July 30-31, 2013

“The Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Open Market Committee on Wednesday released the attached minutes of the Committee meeting held on July 30-31, 2013. The minutes for each regularly scheduled meeting of the Committee ordinarily are made available three weeks after the day of the policy decision and subsequently are published in the Board’s… Continue Reading

Search simultaneously in the DPLA and Europeana

“The Search DPLA and Europeana app lets users do side-by-side searches of Europeana and the DPLA, providing quick and easy access to both libraries’ vast resources. By default, users are shown each object’s title, author, format, date, and link, along with a thumbnail; additional metadata about each object is available by clicking a drop-down arrow.”… Continue Reading

CFPB Examiners Find Mortgage Servicing Problems At Banks And Nonbanks

“Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a report detailing mortgage servicing problems at banks and nonbanks. The report also found that many nonbanks lack robust systems for ensuring they are following federal laws. “Our examinations of banks and nonbanks allow us to correct problems before more consumers are affected,” said CFPB Director Richard… Continue Reading

If We Share Data, Will Anyone Use Them?

Wallis JC, Rolando E, Borgman CL (2013) If We Share Data, Will Anyone Use Them? Data Sharing and Reuse in the Long Tail of Science and Technology. PLoS ONE 8(7): e67332. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0067332 “Research on practices to share and reuse data will inform the design of infrastructure to support data collection, management, and discovery in the… Continue Reading