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The asset management, and more specifically the mutual fund industry, is facing major strategic challenges. Although the market is growing overall, its growth attracts a steady stream of new entrants and new products that jeopardize the position and profitability of (large) incumbent firms. In order to cope with this setting, Andreas Mattig focuses on a holistic market model to sketch the mutual fund industry structure. This allows to propose a new measurement approach and to track the industrial dynamics. Based on these theoretical contributions, he concentrates on governance aspects and moulds the results into a practice-oriented strategic framework.

This paper tries to add to the discussion on determinants for portflio investments, thereby focussing on long term trend factors that influence shifts in the overall patterns of capital flows. Its metodolgy builds upon the approach resented by Garbaldi, More et al, 2002, but uses a sample drawn out of the whole emerging market population. A direct adaption of the variables responsible for portfolio flows to transition economies was extended by two more potential factors and tested on significance for high or low portfolio inflows relative to the peer group in a frist step. In a second step, our data set was corrected for regional shocks and peculiarities and retested. The results yield clear evidence that investors do not carry out in depth fundamental research and that therefore shifts in trends can be traced back to more easily observable composite variables, namely indicators for macro stability, property right protection, security market infrastructure, relative market size and internal capital. Long-term effects were found to account for about 20% of the annual variation in inflow, which is consistent with the rich literature on short term effects, showing a respective contribution of 80%. We found a considerable amount of cross correlation among the variables, forcing us to label our variables indicators and leaving room for discussion on a common underlying determinant. Based on theory, we see evidence that this "lost determinant" could be "lack of trust in local markets" accompanied by strong market infrastructure which allows quick market exists and entries.

This paper focuses on the nature and intensity of regulatory responses to crises. It highlights the role of mediation played by capital markets and banks in transmitting the action to economic and the time effect this intermediation activity as on the final outcome. In this context, we argue that actions undertaken both by regulatory authorities in order to encounter a financial crisis are subject to lag-structures which in turn are (negatively) correlated with the intensity level of undertaken actions. Intensity of regulatory activity in turn is a function of actions undertaken by regulatory authorities in order to encounter a crisis. We show that a higher degree of intensity with regard to regulatory responses is not always positively correlated with better economic conditions. On the basis of 38 different crises (1990-2003) we find empirical prove that different intensity levels of crisis-response strategies indeed lead to different economic scenarios also impacting lag structures of economic variables in the wave of a crisis. However, response strategies seem additionally to display some learning effects within a country that has already suffered a crisis recently, leading to the then applied measures being the minimum from which response strategies are gradually escalated. Our main contribution stresses that the response in times of crisis is not only more intense, but interestingly (and somewhat contra dictionary to the increased intensity) requires longer lime lags to become effective. Liquidity arguments and velocity of the monetary transmission system thereby do not seem to be the crucial elements that mitigate these effects. Second round effects and disruptions in the financial intermediation system rather than at central bank level might thus need to be given additional attention in future research.

Quot;Outsourcing success - it's all in Governancequot; reported Lauren Bielski in the ABA Banking Journal 2006 and consequently, governance represents the key concept when discussing outsourcing in practice.However, when analyzing the business process outsourcing practice of Swiss Retail Banks, governance aspects seem so far only to play a minor role in the evaluation of outsourcing decisions. This article deals with outsourcing in Swiss retail banking and raises the question whether the mode of governance does matter from the capital markets' point of view, and what modes of governance might be valued most. Our findings provide evidence that governance concepts applied in practice might divert when viewed from the executive's versus the market's perspective or in other words, outsourcing governance in the banking industry is much more a matter of coping with uncertainty than a process of truly aligning contracts in an optimal way. We conclude that the easiest way to cope with uncertainties in BPO practice is to move towards open markets, hence to make services tradable.