Retail payment systems: what can we learn from two-sided markets?
Abstract: Some retail payment systems can be modelled as two-sided markets, where a payment system facilitates money exchanges between consumers on one side and merchants on the other. The system sets rules and standards, to ensure usage and acceptance of its payment instruments by consumers and merchants respectively. Some...

Resources of banking system hit P4.16 T in 2004, up 1.7%.
Byline: LEE C. CHIPONGIAN The local banking systems total resources last year amounted to P4.166 trillion, 1.7 percent higher from 2003s P3.810 trillion, the central bank said in a report. According to a report by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas "Economic and Financial Developments" for...

Business cycle synchronization between Australia and New Zealand.
INTRODUCTION Business-cycle synchronization across two economies might be caused by the endogenous shock transmission between the two countries or by common exogenous influences. For example, the economic prosperity from 1960 through 1973 in Japan caused the mineral boom during the same period in Australia, because Japan needed...

Financial reform, institutional interdependency, and supervisory failure in postcrisis Korea.
In the aftermath of the economic crisis of 1997-1998, South Korea undertook a number of reforms in financial supervision. Questions have been raised, however, as to whether Korea has in fact succeeded in creating a system of financial supervision capable of dealing with certain risks and responding to new...

FACING UP TO GLOBAL CHALLENGES.
The Arab banking industry has achieved spectacular growth and international recognition since the latter part of the 20th century. The new century offers both opportunities and immense challenges for regional banks. The rapid innovations in the field of information technology and telecommunications, coupled with continuous de-regulation of domestic markets...

Gulf banking poised for growth.
Higher oil prices and a downward trend in interest rates have heralded a return to confidence to the Gulf banking sector. Mushtak Parker assesses the prospects for development and growth around the region. WHEN SAUDI ARABIA SNEEZES, the rest of the Gulf states cough. For the last few...

The evolution of competition in banking in a transition economy: an application of the Panzar-Rosse model to Armenia.
Abstract The structure of the banking industry typically undergoes fundamental changes during the transition to a market economy. This research employs the method suggested by Panzar and Rosse (1987) to evaluate the empirical evidence on the evolution of competitive structure in the Armenian banking industry during its...

Resources for social development.
Abstract Considerable additional funds at globally coordinated disposal are recognized as needed to fulfil the social objectives that the world has officially adopted. There are potential routes to obtaining these funds that avoid the political difficulties that 'donor' countries commonly experience in attempts to increase their budgeted...

The threat to economic liberty from international organizations.
It is one of the abiding ironies at the beginning of the new millennium that various international organizations set up after the Second World War to create a new Liberal International Economic Order (LIEO) are now the major purveyors of" global illiberalism. How has this come to pass? Is...

Depoliticizing financial regulation.
Over the past few decades, scholars have called into question the ability of regulatory agencies to function effectively in furtherance of the public interest.(1) Since midcentury, they have amassed convincing evidence that agencies can be captured through, for example, "iron triangles" between Congress, agencies and those supposedly regulated.(2) More...