Market Transparency Research Articles

Characteristic features of the operation of the insurance market of Ukraine in the conditions of martial law

The purpose of the article is to analyze the current state of the insurance market of Ukraine and highlight the peculiarities of its functioning. The relevance of the research is driven by the changes in the structure and functioning mechanisms of this market, associated with the introduction of a new model of its regulation.
 The article defines the essence of the insurance market and its main functions. The current state of the insurance market of Ukraine was reviewed, the main indicators of its development were analyzed with the determination of the reasons for their changes for the period 2019­2022. The most significant trends in the market of insurance services were characterized, among which the follo wing are highlighted: a decrease in the volume of gross insurance premiums; reduction of the number of insurers; increase in the level of insurance payments; decrease in the insurance penetration rate.
 Market problems were identified, the main ones being the low solvency and liquidity of insurers; imperfection of insurers’ business models; lack of market transparency andproblems in corporate governance; lack of a mechanism for guaranteeing insurance payments under long-term life insurance contracts; low demand for insurance services due to distrust in the opaque insurance market and low solvency of the population.
 The peculiarities of the insurance market of Ukraine related to the change of the regulator and the beginning of reform are characterized. The main elements of the new insurance market regulation model, built on the principles of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) and the provisions of the European Union directives, are reviewed.
 The basic norms of the new Law of Ukraine “On Insurance”, which will come into effect on January 1, 2024, have been considered. It was concluded that the preparation of the law took into account numerous proposals of scientists to increase the efficiency of the functioning of the insurance market. It was emphasized that the introduction of a new model of regulation and supervision of the insurance market and improvement of the legislative support for reforms will allow solving a number of existing problems in domestic insurance.

Developing Policy Instruments to Reduce Inequality of Land Ownership

This research is motivated by the inequality of land ownership and policies regarding restrictions on land ownership. However, existing policies have not been able to resolve the problem of inequality in land ownership. The study was conducted using a qualitative approach with a perspective theoretical instrument policy. Primary data was obtained from observation during three months of study fields and interviews with a profound amount of key informants, the head of Government, the village chief, local peasants/local people, and communities. Research results show that the instrument policy of land that is used is not using a practical instrument such as land value reference, added value capturing, and land taxation. Land value reference, added value capturing, and land taxation can be used to reduce land inequality in Bandung Regency. Land value reference will create land market transparency, added value capturing will reduce the appearance of land speculators, and land taxation will effectively deter the person ruling the land. Instruments policy of land practically contributes to reducing idle lands, increasing the growth of the economy, creating field jobs, adding state income, reducing inequality in the economy, and improving the well-being of people.

Blockchain Based Hydrogen Market (BBH2) - A Paradigm-Shifting, Innovative Solution for a Climate-Friendly and Sustainable Structural Change

Until now, there is no flawless tamper-proof verification of climate-friendly "green" hydrogen and the resulting possible tracking of its origin from the renewable energy producer to the end user, so that the entire supply chain of "green" hydrogen cannot be represented in terms of economic, ecological and social sustainability and mapped in a secure and transparent market. This problem can be solved with a suitable blockchain, which also offers further unprecedented added value for the supply chain of the "green" hydrogen market and for sustainable structural change as a whole, and whose development will soon be funded as part of the funding call "Hydrogen Technology Offensive" within the research funding of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection in the 7th Energy Research Program of the Federal Government.

Stock exchange price currents, financial information and market transparency: an introduction

Financial markets derive their political and societal legitimacy from their ability to produce fair and accurate prices. However, reviewing the literature on how stock exchanges price securities, we find an inherent tension between market organization and price disclosure, which is borne out by this special issue's historical case studies.

Market access and transparency: the Genoa and Milan stock exchanges from Italian Unification to World War I

This article focuses on the conflicts over market access rules on the two primary Italian stock exchanges, Milan and Genoa. These conflicts disrupted the quality of information produced by the two markets. Official brokers aimed to defend their monopoly on brokerage and capture rents by limiting market access. Banks wanted wider access so as to avoid paying these rents, create an opaque market and maximize the benefit from their informational advantage. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Milan Exchange implemented a transparent market organization while the Genoa Exchange remained opaque, creating a complementarity between them which fostered the development of the securities market overall. When in 1907 a violent crisis erupted in the dominant Genoa Exchange, legislation was adopted to harmonize the organization of the Italian exchanges.

Constructing a House Price Index for Saudi Arabia

House price movements have a significant influence on the economy. These movements can dramatically affect household wealth and shift consumer spending. Unfortunately, the house price index development in Saudi Arabia is fragile, and data quality suffers from severe errors due to administrative negligence. Therefore, the k-means clustering algorithm technique was used to correct these errors and appropriately redefine the property type. This study attempts to overcome these severe errors to improve transparency and support literature in the Saudi Arabian real estate market as well as the Middle East and North African real estate markets. I compared the official real estate price index of the General Authority for Statistics GASTAT with the proposed mix adjustment and repeat-sales index I constructed from the same transaction data. I conclude that there are considerable concerns regarding the GASTAT index’s credibility and accuracy. This study is the first attempt to construct sophisticated indices for Saudi Arabia on citywide and national levels. I also provide stratification and repeat sales indices for Saudi Arabia. They illustrate the real estate business cycle for the first time and adequately measure the pure house price movements in Saudi Arabia.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯ БІДНОСТІ У КРАЇНАХ СВІТУ

The article attempts to generalize some features of the study of poverty in the modern world. The use of various indicators that demonstrate the level of poverty has been shown. It has been explained that GDP per capita is one of the most accurate ways of assessing the economic development of the state. It has been demonstrated that all the poorest countries are located on the African continent. Almost all of them used to be colonies of European empires, and now they face political instability, civil wars, natural disasters, etc. These problems have been considered on the examples of Niger and Egypt. Another indicator of poverty is the percentage of people living below the poverty line. The difficulty of using this indicator is that national poverty lines in different countries can differ significantly. According to this indicator, 8 African and 2 Latin American countries (Guatemala and Haiti) are in the top ten. The Global Hunger Index (GHI) has been considered, according to which African countries and Syria are among the top ten starving countries. It should be noted that for some countries there is very little data on the number and share of the hungry. When studying the situation in some countries (North Korea, Turkmenistan, Somalia, etc.), it should be borne in mind that the governments of these countries do not always publish real official statistics, and those data that get into the mass media are not always true. It has been proven that the Human Development Index (HDI) is an integrated indicator that can be used to study the problem of poverty. It has been shown that 10 countries with the lowest HDI are located in Africa. Their place in this ranking is influenced not only by material factors, but also by the average life expectancy and education. Africa is still a continent with a large number of illiterate people. The Corruption Perceptions Index is also important for the study of poverty, because corruption slows down reforms and harms transparent market relations. Therefore, it becomes one of the factors of poverty. Using the statistics provided by Transparency International, we have found out that the most corrupt countries are more evenly distributed around the globe, among them are not only African ones, but also Asian and Latin American states. It can be summarized that the nature of poverty is different in the developed and developing countries. In the developing countries, natural conditions, peculiarities of the organization of socioeconomic life, the political system and even the personality of political leaders are important. In the developed countries, poverty is mostly a consequence of individual psychological characteristics, behaviour, specific life circumstances, etc. In these countries, poverty can be easily overcome.

Strategic trading with information acquisition and long-memory stochastic liquidity

This paper investigates the strategic interaction of information acquisition, information-based dynamic trading, and noise trading patterns, as well as its significant implications on market equilibrium outcomes. We consider a market where the strategic trader can dynamically acquire costly information about an asset’s payoff via private signals instead of endowing him with its full information. The noise trading, which provides necessary liquidity for the market, has the feature of long-range dependence. The risk-neutral market maker then sets the equilibrium price for the asset based on information gleaned from the market total order flow. We characterize the equilibria for both opaque and transparent markets depending on whether or not the trader’s order flow is disclosed. In particular, closed-form solutions are obtained for two special cases and associated financial interpretations are provided. We find that: (1) the endogenous information acquisition and information-based trading help improve the price informativeness over time, while the information efficiency could be decreasing; (2) long-memory stochastic liquidity leads to an excessive price volatility; and (3) in a transparent market, the trader should adopt a mixed strategy by adding an additional noise term to the trading strategy to prevent rapid information leakage.

Rockets and Feathers Revisited: Asymmetric Retail Gasoline Pricing in the Era of Market Transparency

In this paper, we revisit the empirical observation that prices rise like rockets when input costs increase but fall like feathers when input costs decrease. The analysis draws on a novel data set that includes daily retail prices of gasoline from 12,804 stations in Germany from January 1, 2014 to December 31, 2018. Our findings based on pooled-panel asymmetric error correction models indicate that the pattern of rockets and feathers is the norm rather than the exception. Our results further show that temporal aggregation of station-level price data leads to inaccurate inferences and could account for the inconclusive findings in the literature.

The quest for more effective vaccine markets – Opportunities, challenges, and what has changed with the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

The past two decades have seen important progress in access to timely, reliable, affordable, and quality-assured supplies of vaccines of global public health importance. The new vaccines developed are powerful tools to fight killers such as pneumonia, diarrhea, and cervical cancer. Global and regional financing and pooled procurement haveshortened the lag between access in high- andlower-income countries.The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that by addressing shortcomings and seizing opportunities, we can do even more. In response to COVID-19, vaccine development and access shifted from a sequential, risk-averse paradigm to a rapid approach with maximum compression of time to market while ensuring quality. Vast public investments and innovative technologies were key facilitators. The pandemic has shown that governments play a crucial role in investing in new vaccines and manufacturing capacity and sharing risks with industry. Despite impressive progress, equity in access remains elusive with important moral, economic, and health-related consequences.Global leaders are working on a new International Treaty for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response. To apply the lessons of COVID-19, that treaty should include a new paradigm for access to vaccines in which governments agree to:(1)establish early sharing of information about emerging outbreaks and early, evidence-informed strategic goals and leadership that serve the collective global health interest.(2)shoulder risks and invest aggressively to address the needs of today and prepare for future emergencies.(3)strengthen market preparedness by investing in new vaccine technologies, regional research, development and manufacturing hubs, and insurance; by enabling regulatory harmonization; by driving market transparency and oversight; and by ensuring that where public funds are invested there is a contractual obligation to ensure access.(4)define principles and operational details for collaboration in times of scarcity that enable countries to protect their own citizens while ensuring that no country is left behind.This would ensure that COVID-19 catalyzes a shift toward greater access for all under Immunization Agenda 2030.

The MAX puzzle in a frontier market before and during the Covid-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT This study analyses the MAX anomaly in a frontier market before and during the Covid19 pandemic. Our sample has 39,673 firm-month observations of non-financial firms in Vietnam from 2008 to 2021. Using the Carhart four-factor model augmented with MAX anomaly, Fama-Macbeth two-step estimations, and portfolio analyses, we report the persistence of the MAX puzzle in Vietnam before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. The arbitrary returns between the highest and lowest MAX portfolios are around 1% per month. Finally, our results report that the MAX anomaly is subsumed by the IVOL anomaly, while the skewness fails to explain the MAX anomaly. Our findings align with the anchoring theory, prospect theory, and prior literature. Our findings align with the anchoring theory, prospect theory, and prior literature. Our study suggests that policymakers improve market transparency to protect retail investors.

A Call to Action Against Persistent Lack of Transparency in Vaccine Pricing Practices During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Lack of transparency in vaccine pricing practices is a problem that has been under discussion for a long time. To tackle this, the World Health Assembly adopted the resolution Improving the transparency of markets for medicines, vaccines, and other health products in 2019. However, despite the appalling effects of the current pandemic and the unequal global distribution of vaccines, the 2019 resolution has not been included as a fundamental pillar in the global health response to COVID-19.Governments and public health agencies have provided public funding to pharmaceutical companies for research and development of new vaccines. Yet, information on pricing strategies and methodologies is still inaccessible. Furthermore, these companies are profiting from publicly funded research and development. But secrecy and opacity prevails in the pharmaceutical industry, affecting low and middle income countries.Situating the demand for transparency, accountability and fair pricing of pharmaceutical products as a global health justice issue, I suggest an independent global observatory for accountability and transparency in the pharmaceutical global market should be created to help international organizations, governments and civil society in their quest for affordable and safe vaccines and therapeutics.

AN ANALYTICAL STUDY ON IMPACT OF INVESTORS’ PROTECTION MEASURES ON PERCEPTION AND SATISFACTION OF INVESTORS

Strict Investors’ Protection measure is to create higher accountability, transparency and integrity in Various Investment Avenues. Investors’ Protection measures includes those policies that lead to increase the faith of Investors in Investment Avenue. The aim of Investors’ Protection Measures of SEBI is to create higher accountability, transparency and integrity in securities market. Through investors’ protection measures, awareness and satisfaction of the investor can be maintained and interest of investors can be safeguarded. In this study researchers have made attempt to analyse the perception and satisfaction of investors towards investors’ protection measures. Researchers have analyzed the relationship between Expectation and Experience of investors’ protection measures and found that the performance of investors’ protection measures in majority cases are below Expectation. Investors are either satisfied or highly satisfied in all statements pertaining to satisfaction.

How to make the EU Energy Platform into an effective emergency tool

Abstract Uncertainty regarding the supply of Russian natural gas is causing European gas and electricity prices to become extremely high and volatile. Coordination is essential to ensure that disruptions during difficult winter months do not lead to a break-up of the EU internal gas market with potentially serious political repercussions. One part of the EU response is the establishment of an EU Energy Platform for the purchase of gas, LNG and hydrogen. The platform can be developed into an effective emergency tool – if Member States buy gas jointly they will find it much easier to let markets allocate scarce volumes across borders in case of a full supply disruption from Russia. We detail two complementary proposals to achieve this. First, there should be EU-wide auctioning of a remuneration for filling storage sites in specific regions. Secondly, EU demand for additional LNG quantities, and the sourcing of this on international markets, should be coordinated through a platform – this creates a transparent market for said volumes.

Government subsidies and the development of PPP projects: evidence from China

ABSTRACT Based on micro data on public-private partnership (PPP) projects in China, this study adopts the survival analysis model and the difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) method to explore the effects of government subsidies on PPP project development. We investigate PPP project development from the perspective of contract signing and construction commencement, making an original contribution to the existing literature. We find that government subsidies can promote the faster signing of PPP contracts but cannot promote on-time construction commencement of PPP projects. This is because government subsidies do not solve the financing constraints that restrict the commencement of PPP project construction. Additionally, government subsidies can promote the faster signing of PPP contracts and on-time construction commencement of PPP projects in areas with high PPP market transparency.

Dynamics between Direct Industrial Real Estate and the Macroeconomy: An Empirical Study of Hong Kong

Pricing of direct industrial real estate (DIRE) has long been under-researched due to the paucity of analysable data. Compared to other types of real estate, DIRE has often been regarded as more inefficient because of information asymmetry amongst market players stemming from a lack of market transparency. Therefore, pricing of DIRE usually does not follow a random walk and should be more predictable than other types of real estate. Along this line of reasoning, this study empirically investigates the causal relationships between the price-to-rent ratio of DIRE and macroeconomic attributes using cointegration and causality techniques. More specifically, we employ data on the market of Hong Kong to investigate the lead-lag relationships between the price-to-rent ratio of DIRE and a wide spectrum of macroeconomic and financial indicators, including inflation, money supply, national income, exchange rates, performance of housing market and other economic indicators specific to the industrial sector. The results of our statistical tests reveal significant evidence that DIRE is generally moving in syncs with other segments of the economy over time in terms of long-term cointegration. Further, DIRE tends to lag behind the overall macroeconomy in terms of Granger causation with the price-to-rent ratio exhibiting varying lengths of time lag with the macroeconomic determinants. The findings of the study carry important implications for informing property valuation practices and industrial land policy, particularly in designing urban revitalization programmes aimed at optimising industrial land use.

What can we learn from the analysis of the fine wines market efficiency?

AbstractThis study analyzes the efficiency hypothesis for three major wine indices using different parametric and non‐parametric tests for the short and long‐term horizons. Based on monthly data over the period 2003–2019, our analysis identifies two main findings. First, in the short term, there is market inefficiency allowing for investment and diversification opportunities and a need for greater market transparency. Second, the spread between wine markets and financial markets can disappear in the long term, that is, there is a long‐run relationship that is relatively compatible with efficiency, except for the Bordeaux Legends 50 index. This implies greater efficiency and therefore better information and fewer investment and diversification opportunities.

Hedonic modeling to facilitate price reporting and fed cattle market transparency

AbstractLivestock Mandatory Price reporting, enacted to increase market transparency, has been in place for more than 20 years. However, immense structural change in cattle and beef markets has challenged market information over that time. Large variation present in cattle transaction prices, especially those in the Formula purchases category, on any given day has made traditionally United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)‐reported weighted‐average prices less meaningful. Using nearly 6 years of The Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act of 1999 transactions data from USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA AMS), we demonstrate use of hedonic modeling to facilitate price reporting. While the models show promise to provide useful information, they reveal substantial weaknesses associated with current transaction information collected by USDA from packers. We offer suggestions for improved data collection which would make hedonic modeling of transactions prices a more valuable tool to increase usefulness of reported market prices.

Open Energy Data — A regulatory framework proposal under the Portuguese electric system context

Europe is going through a transition in the electric system, with the massive deployment of the smart meter infrastructure promoted by several directives, regulations and network codes. This deployment generates a significant amount of data that could be used to promote energy efficiency, new energy services and market transparency. However, the use of this data has not yet reached the majority of the final users or other stakeholders due to either lack of data interoperability between the different agents in the system and the lack of regulation regarding the share and use of the data. In parallel, the EU regulated the use of personal data through the General Data Protection Regulation. The enforcement of this regulation resulted in the use of data in the energy sector becoming even more difficult. However, the need to make energy data useful for end-users to promote their participation in the system and become more efficient and active agents still exists. This paper looks into the Portuguese national framework and the European regulations and policies in data and energy and then proposes a new regulatory framework that could cope with all the aforementioned constraints for the Portuguese Electric System

Towards a theoretical framework for the innovation in sustainability reporting: An integrated reporting perspective

Integrated Reporting (IR), as a novel sustainability-oriented organizational reporting approach, is expected to produce better corporate reporting for stakeholders and promote greater transparency and accountability in the capital market. This paper offers a theoretical framework that integrates five mainstream IR theories: stakeholder theory, agency theory, signalling theory, legitimacy theory, and institutional theory. Based on the theoretical framework, there are three drivers for companies to improve their IR disclosure practices: to mitigate information asymmetry between the organisation and all stakeholders; to signal superior quality, legitimacy, and conformity to all stakeholders; and to discharge accountability to all stakeholders. Direct and indirect costs are the main factors that lead to poor IR disclosure practices. This study is the first attempt to construct an integrated theoretical framework for IR. The constructed framework can be adopted as a theoretical foundation for future empirical studies with regard to IR.