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Working Papers | 2008

Feasibility of Integrating Solar Desalination with Greenhouse Systems in Semi-Arid Region of North-west India

Girja Sharan

A two-phase project is underway to develop greenhouse systems suitable for water scarce, semi-arid region of north-west India (Kutch). The first phase aimed at studying the effectiveness of natural ventilation and earth-tube-heat-exchanger for environmental control, in place of fan-pads commonly used. These measures were able to reduce the need for evaporative cooling significantly and offer scope for further improvement. The second phase, just started, aims at finding cost-effective means of desalinating brackish water for plant use. Arrays of simple basin type solar stills have been used in this region in the past to provide drinking water in villages. The area of stills needed to meet the greenhouse crop requirement works out to approximately half the cropping area. It would be cumbersome to integrate these with greenhouse structure. Besides, these were reported to be difficult to maintain. A new option - solar assisted low temperature thermal desalination - is therefore being pursued. An outline of the work in progress is presented.

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Working Papers | 2008

Inter-relationship between Economic Growth, Savings and Inflation in Asia

Chaturvedi Vaibhav, Brajesh Kumar, and Ravindra H. Dholakia

The present study examines the inter- relationship between economic growth, saving rate and inflation for south-east and south Asia in a simultaneous equation framework using two stage least squares with panel data. The relationship between saving rate and growth has been found to be bi-directional and positive. Inflation has a highly significant negative effect on growth but positive effect on saving rate. Inflation is not affected by growth but is largely determined by its past values, and saving rate is not affected by interest rate. These findings for countries in Asia with widely divergent values of aggregates are very relevant for development policies and strategies.

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Working Papers | 2008

International Outsourcing Hurdles in Value-added Services

Arindam Banerjee

Purpose: International Outsourcing has been traditionally looked upon as a low end cost effective servicing option to take advantage of the cost arbitrage that exists across countries. Of late, many outsourcing vendors have realized that the advantages of cost differentials that spurred a lot of the global outsourcing business in the past 20 years will disappear in the medium term. This paper provides a perspective about how much value addition, besides cost, traditional outsourcing vendors can provide and what may be the facilitator/ inhibitors of such activities. Approach: To substantiate the claim, a brief case describing the setting up of an offshore analytics operation is presented which gives a back drop to the challenges faced in relatively high end value creation processes in a remote outsourced environment. Findings/Claim: The author uses the case to develop a conceptual model of off shoring value -added services. The key dimensions that will determine the extent to which international outsourcing of high end services will take place are: 1) Expertise of the vendor, 2) Environmental Stability of the Outsourcing Domain, 3) Physical Barriers to outsourcing complex business processes such as, Communication Problems and Proximity issues, 4) Possibility of Knowledge Leakage from Outsourcing Domain and, 5) Cost Benefits of Outsourcing. Practical Implications: The author contends that conventional outsourcing vendors may find it difficult to acquire "Expert Power" and, set aside negative perceptions of "Environmental Stability" of their domain, in the pursuit to climb up the value chain in their client organizations. The validation of the proposed model is an opportunity for future research. Originality: This paper is one of the first to present a model that will govern the growth of international outsourcing opportunities in high end value-added processes.

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Working Papers | 2008

Impact of 360 Degree Feedback: A Follow-up study of Four Organizations

T. V. Rao and Chawla Nandini

A large number of organizations have been using 360 degree feedback in India as leadership development intervention. This paper is based on the feedback of 43 participants from four companies where the 360 Degree Feedback program was initiated. The study was done using a questionnaire method. The results indicated that there has been an overall positive impact reported of 360 Degree intervention on ones professional life after 360DF. More than 60% of the participants report that they visited 360DF data every quarter. 24 participants reported that about 50% of their action plans prepared at the end of the 360 intervention were implemented. At least 30% of the action plans were achieved by 6 of the participants and 2 participants reported achievement of all their action plans. The participants also reported that the RSDQ model based 360DF tool provided detailed insight covering various parameters of one's role. The participants also recommend that with more periodic follow up and review sessions (every quarter) anchored by internal HR and more focus and seriousness among the participants to work on the action plans will result in using 360 DF for change and growth

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Working Papers | 2008

Hedging Effectiveness of Constant and Time Varying Hedge Ratio in Indian Stock and Commodity Futures Markets

Ajay Pandey

This paper examines hedging effectiveness of futures contract on a financial asset and commodities in Indian markets. In an emerging market context like India, the growth of capital and commodity futures market would depend on effectiveness of derivatives in managing risk. For managing risk, understanding optimal hedge ratio is critical for devising effective hedging strategy. We estimate dynamic and constant hedge ratio for S&P CNX Nifty index futures, Gold futures and Soybean futures. Various models (OLS, VAR, and VECM) are used to estimate constant hedge ratio. To estimate dynamic hedge ratios, we use VAR-MGARCH. We compare in-sample and out-of-sample performance of these models in reducing portfolio risk. It is found that in most of the cases, VAR-MGARCH model estimates of time varying hedge ratio provide highest variance reduction as compared to hedges based on constant hedge ratio. Our results are consistent with findings of Myers (1991), Baillie and Myers (1991), Park and Switzer (1995a,b), Lypny and Powella (1998), Kavussanos and Nomikos (2000), Yang (2001), and Floros and Vougas (2006).

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Working Papers | 2008

Process, People, Power and Conflict: Some Lessons from a Participatory Policy Process in Andhra Pradesh, India

Vinod Ahuja, Gustafson Daniel J, and Joachim Otte

A large body of empirical literature highlights the need for stakeholder participation within the context of policy change and democratic governance. This makes intuitive sense and may appear to be a straightforward process of managing conflicting interests, building consensus, and lining up support. The reality, however, is often much more complicated and conflictive, even where there is general agreement on the policy objectives. The present paper examines these issues in the context of participatory policy development for the delivery of veterinary services by para-professionals in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It illustrates the challenges inherent in the politics of participatory policy processes and the potential of 'agenda hijack' by influential partners, resulting in missed learning opportunities. It also offers insights on practical steps to counter these dangers, as potential lessons for practitioners and project managers engaged in participatory policy reform processes.

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Working Papers | 2008

Exploring Feasibility of Alternate Channels of Information Dissemination: Study of Rural Consumers Information Needs

Rajanish Dass

Information plays a vital role in lives of individuals/groups for development and growth. Just information does not serve the purpose, but accurate information does. The sources/tools/techniques used to get the desired information have evolved from the foremost person-to-person interaction to the latest search engines on the World Wide Web. Thus options to obtain information have widened. Search engines have enabled to get information from any corner of the world to person's desktop within fraction of seconds. In this paper, we try to study the information needs of rural population in India. This research tries to understand types of information required and frequency of search for information among the rural population. The study attempts to understand whether, demand exists for 'information on demand' or search engine service itself would unlock a new untapped demand. The socio-economic aspect, livelihoods of rural population and the available resources for information retrieval have been studied to enable, if search engine service could be made available to them and in what form. Whether this proposition of search engine services being made available to those who are unable to access or rural population would be a win-win scenario for the users as well as for the search engine service providers (considering the limiting factors). The paper ends, with possible alternatives to make search engine services available to those unable to access and at the same time can be attractive to the search engine service providers.

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Working Papers | 2008

Volatility Modeling, Seasonality and Risk-Return Relationship in GARCH-in-Mean Framework: The Case of Indian Stock and Commodity Markets

Brajesh Kumar and Priyanka Singh

This paper is based on an empirical study of volatility, risk premium and seasonality in risk-return relation of the Indian stock and commodity markets. This investigation is conducted by means of the General Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity in the mean model (GARCH-in-Mean) introduced by Engle et al. (1987). A systematic approach to model volatility in returns is presented. Volatility clustering and asymmetric nature is examined for Indian stock and commodity markets. The risk-return relationship and seasonality in risk-return are also investigated through GARCH-in-Mean modeling in which seasonal dummies are used for return as well as volatility equation. The empirical work has been carried out on market index S&P CNX Nifty for a period of 18 years from January 1990 to December 2007. Gold prices from 22nd July 2005 to 20th February 2008 and Soybean from October 2004-December 2007 are also considered. The stock and commodity markets returns show persistence as well as clustering and asymmetric properties. Risk-return relationship is positive though insignificant for Nifty and Soybean where as significant positive relationship is found in the case of Gold. Seasonality in risk and return is also found which suggests the asymmetric nature of return, i.e. negative correlation between return and its volatility.

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Working Papers | 2008

Choice of a Retail Store and Retail Store Format: A Hierarchical Logit Model

Tripathi Sanjeev and Piyush Kumar Sinha

The literature on store choice has mainly studied the store attributes, and ignored the consumer attributes in store choice. Even when, the consumer attributes have been incorporated the strength of relationship has been weak. Also, the literature on store choice has completely ignored format choice, when studying store choice. The paper argues for incorporating both the shopper attributes in store choice, and the store formats. Shopper attributes can be captured through the demographic variables, as they can be objectively measured, and these also capture a considerable amount of attitudinal and behavioural variables. The paper proposes to link store choice, format choice and consumer demographic variables, through a hierarchical logistic choice model in which the consumers first choose a store format and then a particular store within that format. A nested logit model is developed, and the variables predicting the choice probabilities are identified. The requirement of data for the empirical analysis is specified, the model has not been verified in the absence of empirical data but the operationalization of variables is done.

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Working Papers | 2008

Urban Development Strategy for Bihar: A Management Perspective

Prem Pangotra and Govil Astha

Bihar is among the least urbanized states in India with a level of urbanization just above 10% in 2001. The present study suggests a four-stage strategy for the urban development of Bihar. The stages are- (i) Increase in the rate of urbanization (ii) Increase in the resources of Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) (iii) Improvement in delivery of urban services, and (iv)Local economic development for employment generation in cities. The current state of finances of ULBs in Bihar is very poor on account of low yield of own revenue sources and low level of grants. The quality of services provided by ULBs in Bihar, measured by expenditure on these services is inferior in comparison to standard benchmarks and other selected cities in India. The location quotient analysis of cities in Bihar reveals lack of industrial development, and reliance on primary activities for employment. Positive correlation between economic growth and share of service sector in employment and negative correlation between economic growth and primary sector employment justify the need for efforts towards development of industrial and service sectors in the state.

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