Relationship between bank competition and stability: the case of the UK

This paper aims to examine the impact of Good Corporate Governance (GCG) practice on bank stability and performance. Governance is measured using the GCG rating that covers eleven aspects. The authors apply instrumental regression to link governance to performance and stability. The study covers a sample of 150 banks. The result shows that bank stability can mediate bank governance and bank performance. On the determinant of bank performance, it can be concluded that the GCG rating is positive and directly influences bank performance. Bank stability is also positive for bank performance indicating the indirect contribution of the GCG rating to bank performance. NPL, LDR, CAR and bank’s size (LASSET) are all negative and significant. The aim of this paper is to provide strong empirical evidence on the importance of governance and stability for performance. The limitations of this paper are the size of the sample and that it only covers public banks which are theoretically required to apply better governance in all aspects of their business by the Capital Market Authority.

The paper evaluates the level of competition on the vegetable market. Based on the analysis of the production development trends and resource potential, dynamics and ratio of export and import of agricultural products, including vegetables are presented; dynamics of self-sufficiency ratio of these products is studied; challenges of food security and competitive advantages of Georgian vegetables are identified.
The article concludes that the country has a significant potential for exporting vegetables both to the countries of Europe and Middle East. The paper discusses the factors that hinder export of vegetables; in addition, the ways for reducing dependency on seasonality, opportunities for the development of modern greenhouses and mechanisms for supplying goods to customers all year round are suggested.
On the basis of analyzing the level of competition on the vegetable market, vegetable business is considered as monopolistic. In addition, it is calculated that, currently, local vegetables products account for only 75% of the market.
The paper evaluates the outcomes of high market power caused by monopoly in vegetable business; the impact of market power on pricing mechanism and the welfare of population is determined. In accordance with the problems identified, conclusions are made and recommendations for solving these problems are suggested.

The improvement of global Internet access and the COVID-19 pandemic, which necessitated mass testing of online teaching methods, have forwarded the competition between higher education institutions from the regional level and the struggle for the rich student into the competition for students in all countries. The paper aims to determine the influence of the rating of higher education institutions on the interest of Internet users by conducting a comparative analysis of the popularity of the official names of higher education institutions in search queries in Ukraine and Poland. To do this, a comparative analysis of the change in the interest in leading higher education institutions in Ukraine and Poland in search queries in the Google search engine is carried out. The analysis is performed using the Google Trends web application. As a result, it is found that a high position of the university in the national ranking does not guarantee more search queries about it on the Internet by both national Internet users and users from the neighboring country. In general, Internet users continue to be most interested in universities located in their region at the time of the search.