Useful Resources
Competitive Markets
Markets take many forms. Sometimes markets are highly organized, such as the markets for many agricultural commodities. In these markets, buyers and sellers meet at a specific time and place, where an auctioneer helps set prices and arrange sales.
More often, markets are less organized. For example, consider the market for ice cream in a particular town. Buyers of ice cream do not meet together at any one time. The sellers of ice cream are in different locations and offer somewhat different products. There is no auctioneer calling out the price of ice cream. Each seller posts a price for an ice-cream cone, and each buyer decides how much ice cream to buy at each store.
Even though it is not organized, the group of ice-cream buyers and ice-cream sellers forms a market. Each buyer knows that there are several sellers from which to choose, and each seller is aware that his product is similar to that offered by other sellers. The price of ice cream and the quantity of ice cream sold are not determined by any single buyer or seller. Rather, price and quantity are determined by all buyers and sellers as they interact in the marketplace. Read more
The Global Financial Center’s Index
The Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI) was first published in March 2007 to produce an indicative rating of the competitiveness of each major financial centre in the world. The FCI enables financial centres to be ranked against each other and identifies the changing priorities and concerns of finance professionals. This report, the second in the series (GFCI 2), includes updates to the external indices used in the GFCI model, additional indices, and changes reflecting the perceptions of financial services professionals.
GFCI 2 also includes some enhancements to the GFCI methodology; GFCI 1 results are restated throughout GFCI 2 to reflect those enhancements . The top six centres in GFCI 2 have maintained the same rankings as in GFCI 1. London leads New York slightly in all five areas of competitiveness; people, business environment, market access, infrastructure and general competitiveness. London is a little further ahead of New York than it was in GFCI 1. In GFCI 1 the gap was seven points on a 1,000 point scale. The gap is now 19 points although this is still not a significant margin. GFCI 2 shows, again, that London and New York are the two leading global financial centres. London and New York have slightly increased their lead over the next two strongest centres, Hong Kong and Singapore, and are now 90 points ahead (compared with 88 points ahead in GFCI 1). In GFCI 1, it was clear that Hong Kong and Singapore were the leading Asian centres. These two financial centres are still well ahead of Tokyo. Zurich, a financial centre strongly focused on the two niche sectors of private banking and asset management, is in 5th place. Frankfurt remains in 6th place and Geneva has moved three places up the rankings to 7th place. Centres that have moved significantly since GFCI 1 include Luxembourg which has risen by nine positions to 17th, whilst Wellington, Hamilton (Bermuda), Warsaw and Lisbon have all fallen.
