In today’s complex and more competitive banking structure and environment, only efficient banks will survive. This has become more significant in view of the increased pace of globalization and liberalization more particularly after 1991 when the financial liberalization process was initiated in India followed by more stress on globalization in 2000. The consolidation of the banks has been receiving attention of the government and the central bank of the country. However, there remain some practical aspects which are hindrances to this process. In this article an attempt has been made to analyze public sector banks’ efficiency though the scaling technique, as prescribed efficiency indicators of banks while keeping in view the size of the bank. It is observed during the analysis that only a few of the banks are close to high efficiency and rest lie on a satisfactory efficiency level. In addition, to assess the degree of correlation among various efficiency parameters, the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) technique has been used for measuring the efficiency of banks in a more realistic manner. It was further observed that there is a significant relation among return on assets (ROAs), spread and profit per employee.

Quality of institutions has been found to positively affect Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows. This, however, fails to explain the flow of FDI into countries with poor quality of institutions like India and China. This article shows that FDI flows in the form of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (CBMAs) in India share a negative relationship with the gap in quality of institutions between the host and home countries after controlling for market size and market opportunity in the home and host country and infrastructural facilities in the host country. This suggests that apart from market size and opportunity, CBMAs in India are attracted by poor quality of institutions, particularly corruption and poor governance in the country.

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Numerous research studies emphasized the importance of innovation in competitiveness and economic growth. Using a sample of manufacturing-focused firms in India incorporated between the years 2004-2011 and following them for a period of five years post-incubation, we study the effect of innovation on the size transition of firms (i.e., the transition of firms from one size to another). We define the size of a firm by its annual sales turnover. The empirical analysis indicates that the impact of innovation on firm transition is conditional upon the firm size and the ownership structure of firms. The effect of innovation on firm transition varies with firm size. Further, the firms affiliated to a business group have a positive relationship indicating higher probability of transition. The novelty of this paper lies in a suggested conceptual framework based on the linkage between innovation activities and competitiveness signifying the structured approach towards firm transition. This study has significant implications for industrial policy in developing countries.

The literature on competition policy in emerging markets is divided into two conflicting schools of thought. One school argues in favour of convergence with the efficiency-based policy, framework in advanced countries. The other school advocates a broad competition policy specific to the requirements of the emerging markets, based on both economic and non-economic goals. Taking the case of India, an emerging market economy, with special focus on abuse of dominant position, this paper shows that there is a tendency towards convergence to the efficiency-based approach of advanced countries with some weightage given to domestic goals. This could be attributed to emerging market’s increased requirement of the efficiency-based analysis and growing interdependence on other economies in the post-liberalization period, on one hand, and lack of expertise in the emerging markets to develop indigenous competition law, on the other. Moreover, owing to more similarity in economic, regulatory and institutional conditions, there is convergence with the competition policy in the European Union rather than that in the United States. The article also shows that the specific convergence approach adopted by emerging markets may not always be in their domestic interest. JEL: K21, L41, O1