Volume 12 (2012): Edizione 4 (December 2012)

The list of variables included in wage models has been extended substantially since 1974 when Mincer published his model containing years of schooling and quadratic function of potential experience. This paper provides an overview of the variables most often employed in wage equations, including results from their estimations. Education, experience, particular skills, psychological traits, beauty and health, social capital, characteristics potentially connected with discrimination, individual’s household characteristics and social, cultural and economic background the individual was exposed to during childhood and adolescence, all these are aggregated fields of interest which are discussed in detail. The paper is concluded by the outline of the probable development of research on wage determinants.

This paper claims that Onemli’s results published in “Access Pricing under Imperfect Competition”, Review of Economic Perspectives, 2012, are incorrect. Contrary to Onemli, we claim that in an industry, where a monopoly incumbent produces a key input used by itself and its competitors on a downstream market which is Cournot oligopoly, the regulator should set the second-best access charge such that the incumbent’s total profit is zero if the first-best access charge is not feasible. The competitors’ ability to produce the key input themselves does not change the outcome since no competitor chooses to use this option under this regulation. We also discuss some limitations of the Onemli’s model.

In the context of initiation of economic reforms in general and changes in policies and regulations of the banking sector in particular, the present paper attempts to examine the structure-conduct-performance relationships in Indian banking sector. It is observed that there have been changes in the market structure of Indian banking sector, conducts of the banks and their performance in the post-reform era, especially during the last decade, though the changes have not been significant in every aspect. Using a panel dataset of 59 banks operating in India during 1999-2000 to 2008-2009 and applying the two-stage least squares (2SLS) method of estimation, the paper finds that there exist strong inter-linkages amongst structure of the market, banks’ conduct and their financial performance. While market share of a bank depends directly on its market size, asset base, selling efforts, and past financial performance, its selling efforts vary directly with market share, asset base, and past financial performance. On the other hand, returns on assets of a bank vary directly with its market share, but inversely with its asset base and selling efforts. The regression results essentially suggest for multidirectional and dynamic SCP relationships in Indian banking sector. It is also found that the nature of ownership has significant influence on market share, selling efforts and financial performance of the banks. As compared to the nationalised banks, market share of the private banks (both domestic and foreign) is found to be lower. But private banks make greater selling efforts and have better financial performance vis-à-vis their public sector counterparts