Did bank nationalization save India?

When India survived the global financial crisis relatively unscathed, several prominent public figures claimed that the country’s public sector banks had been pillars of stability and resilience, contributing to the economy’s strong performance under stress. Indeed, during the crisis, households and firms shifted money from private to public banks, and the latter outperformed the former through those tough times. But what really happened? At the recently held India Policy Forum, Viral Acharya of New York University provided a comprehensive and provocative empirical analysis. No such analysis is perfect, but there is great merit in actually digging into the data, rather than jumping to conclusions and shaping policy without adequate investigation.

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Competition in the Indian Market for Currency Derivatives

In 2009, MCX Stock Exchange (MCX-SX) “informed” the Competition Commission of India (CCI) that the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) was acting anti-competitively in the nascent market for currency derivatives. Both NSE and MCX-SX provide platforms for trading instruments such as US Dollar-Indian Rupee currency futures of differenhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gift maturities. MCX-SX essentially complained that NSE was using predatory pricing to drive its competitor out of the market, using its dominant overall position in providing trading platforms for financial instruments (especially equities), and resulting deep pockets.

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