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This paper assesses trends in food environment and market concentration and racial and ethnic inequities in food environment exposure and food retail market concentration at the US census tract level from 2000 to 2019. Establishment-level data from the National Establishment Time Series were used to measure food environment exposure and food retail market concentration. We linked that dataset to race, ethnicity and social vulnerability information from the American Community Survey and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. A geospatial hot-spot analysis was conducted to identify relatively low and high healthy food access clusters based on the modified Retail Food Environment Index (mRFEI). The associations were assessed using two-way fixed effects regression models. Census tracts spanning all US states. 69 904 US census tracts. The geospatial analysis revealed clear patterns of areas with high and low mRFEI values. Our empirical findings point to disparities in food environment exposure and market concentration by race. The analysis shows that Asian Americans are likelier to live in neighbourhoods with a low food environment exposure and low retail market concentration. These adverse effects are more pronounced in metro areas. The robustness analysis for the social vulnerability index confirms these results. US food policies must address disparities in neighbourhood food environments and foster a healthy, profitable, equitable and sustainable food system. Our findings may inform equity-oriented neighbourhood, land use and food systems planning. Identifying priority areas for investment and policy interventions is essential for equity-oriented neighbourhood planning.

Departing from the existing literature, which associates credit information sharing with improved access to credit in advanced economies, we examine whether credit information sharing can also reduce loan default rate for banks domiciled in developing countries. Using a large dataset covering 879 unique banks from 87 developing countries from every continent, over a 9-year period (i.e., over 6300 observations), we uncover three new findings. First, we find that credit information sharing reduces loan default rate. Second, we show that the relationship between credit information sharing and loan default rate is conditional on banking market concentration. Third, our findings suggest that governance quality at the country level does not have a strong moderating role on the effect of credit information sharing on loan default rate.

The importance of the question about the relationship between concentration and efficiency lies in the fact that banks’ efficiency affects ability to extend loans and ensure financial stability of the banking sector. The study examines this relationship on the example of 150 banks operating between 2005 and 2019 in 11 EU and 8 non-EU countries from the SECE region. The value of profit efficiency was assessed with the stochastic frontier approach, and next regressed with the banking market concentration and bank specific and macroeconomic explanatory variables. The results for the entire sample as well as for domestic and foreign-owned banks indicate that concentration positively and nonlinearly impacts bank efficiency, both in EU and non-EU countries. Moreover, the size of a bank and income diversification help to improve efficiency of banks in the SECE region. The study shows that banks in SECE countries seem to follow the efficient structure hypothesis.

Purpose This study aims to study the relationship between audit components and collusion in the audit market. Design/methodology/approach The statistical population of the study includes 130 listed firms on the Tehran Stock Exchange from 2012-2017. The data tested using multivariate regression. Findings The findings of the study indicate that there is a positive and significant relationship between Rank A audit firms, competition and audit fees and audit market adaptability. The relationship standard fees and audit market adaptability, however, is negative and significant. Moreover, the results of the study show that there is no significant relationship between opinion shopping, type of audit report, audit market concentration, and agency costs with audit market adaptability. Originality/value The current study fills the gap in this area, and the results of the study may give direction to researchers and policy makers.

Many natural competitors are jointly held by a small set of large institutional investors. In the U.S. airline industry, taking common ownership into account implies increases in market concentration that are 10 times larger than what is \"presumed likely to enhance market power\" by antitrust authorities.¹ Within-route changes in common ownership concentration robustly correlate with route-level changes in ticket prices, even when we only use variation in ownership due to the combination of two large asset managers. We conclude that a hidden social cost—reduced product market competition—accompanies the private benefits of diversification and good governance.

The fall of labor’s share of GDP in the United States and many other countries in recent decades is well documented but its causes remain uncertain. Existing empirical assessments typically rely on industry or macro data, obscuring heterogeneity among firms. In this article, we analyze micro panel data from the U.S. Economic Census since 1982 and document empirical patterns to assess a new interpretation of the fall in the labor share based on the rise of “superstar firms.” If globalization or technological changes push sales toward the most productive firms in each industry, product market concentration will rise as industries become increasingly dominated by superstar firms, which have high markups and a low labor share of value added. We empirically assess seven predictions of this hypothesis: (i) industry sales will increasingly concentrate in a small number of firms; (ii) industries where concentration rises most will have the largest declines in the labor share; (iii) the fall in the labor share will be driven largely by reallocation rather than a fall in the unweighted mean labor share across all firms; (iv) the between-firm reallocation component of the fall in the labor share will be greatest in the sectors with the largest increases in market concentration; (v) the industries that are becoming more concentrated will exhibit faster growth of productivity; (vi) the aggregate markup will rise more than the typical firm’s markup; and (vii) these patterns should be observed not only in U.S. firms but also internationally. We find support for all of these predictions.

For many products, platforms enable sellers to transact with buyers. We show that the competitive conditions among sellers shape the market structure in platformindustries. If productmarket competition is tough, sellers avoid competitors by joining different platforms. This allows platforms to sustain high fees and explains why, for example, in some online markets, several homogeneous platforms segment the market. Instead, if product market competition is soft, agglomeration on a single platform emerges, and platforms fight for the dominant position. These insights give rise to novel predictions. For instance, market concentration and fees are negatively correlated in platform industries, which inverts the standard logic of competition.

We develop a tractable general equilibrium framework in which firms are large and have market power with respect to both products and labor, and in which a firm’s decisions are affected by its ownership structure. We characterize the Cournot–Walras equilibrium of an economy where each firm maximizes a share-weighted average of shareholder utilities—rendering the equilibrium independent of price normalization. In a one-sector economy, if returns to scale are non-increasing, then an increase in “effective” market concentration (which accounts for common ownership) leads to declines in employment, real wages, and the labor share. Yet when there are multiple sectors, due to an intersectoral pecuniary externality, an increase in common ownership could stimulate the economy when the elasticity of labor supply is high relative to the elasticity of substitution in product markets. We characterize for which ownership structures the monopolistically competitive limit or an oligopolistic one is attained as the number of sectors in the economy increases. When firms have heterogeneous constant returns to scale technologies, we find that an increase in common ownership leads to markets that are more concentrated.

The new residential property price in Hong Kong has rocketed in the last decade and has ranked within the top three metropolitan cities in the world. Housing is a necessity for most people, high residential property price has its social ramification. The rocketing price seems not solely the result of the market. As such, this raised the issue of competition in this market. This study employs Concentration Ratio and Hirfindahl-Hirschman index to evaluate the market concentration of the New Private Resident Units Market in Hong Kong. Using the best information available in the public domains and applying universal thresholds, the New Private Resident Units Market in Hong Kong is considered moderately concentrated. It is noted that the big five listed developers in Hong Kong are collectively holding a dominant position of the potential supply. Moreover, the top three have comparable market shares thus suggesting no monopoly exists. It is also found that the substantial land banks held by the five big listed developers, amount to 60% of that owned by the Government. These developers will therefore retain their dominant market power in the future. Further study is recommended to examine whether the big developers have abused their market power.

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. 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.