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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.

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.

The common aim of legislation in the field of competition and consumer protection is to ensure the consumers’ sovereignty and well-being.Based on the analysis of literature in this field we have established, as the main focus of our research, a study of the correlation between the degree of market concentration and the level of consumer protection. By using regression analysis applied to data collected from two sectors of activity, respectively the compulsory civil liability insurance for car owners and mobile telecommunications, we have shown that there is a direct correlation, meaning that a high degree of market concentration – which indicates a low competition level, leads to a decrease in the level of consumer protection.

This study provides a new theoretical result that a decline in the long-term interest rate can trigger a stronger investment response by market leaders relative to market followers, thereby leading to more concentrated markets, higher profits, and lower aggregate productivity growth. This strategic effect of lower interest rates on market concentration implies that aggregate productivity growth declines as the interest rate approaches zero. The framework is relevant for antitrust policy in a low interest rate environment, and it provides a unified explanation for rising market concentration and falling productivity growth as interest rates in the economy have fallen to extremely low levels.

Policy makers and analysts have been voicing concerns about the increasing concentration of health care providers and health insurers in markets nationwide, including the potential adverse effect on the cost and quality of health care. The Council of Economic Advisers recently expressed its concern about the lack of estimates of market concentration in many sectors of the US economy. To address this gap in health care, this study analyzed market concentration trends in the United States from 2010 to 2016 for hospitals, physician organizations, and health insurers. Hospital and physician organization markets became increasingly concentrated over this time period. Concentration among primary care physicians increased the most, partially because hospitals and health care systems acquired primary care physician organizations. In 2016, 90 percent of Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) were highly concentrated for hospitals, 65 percent for specialist physicians, 39 percent for primary care physicians, and 57 percent for insurers. Ninety-one percent of the 346 MSAs analyzed may have warranted concern and scrutiny because of their concentration levels in 2016 and changes in their concentrations since 2010. Public policies that enhance competition are needed, such as stricter enforcement of antitrust laws, reducing barriers to entry, and restricting anticompetitive behaviors.