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Working Papers | 2006

Can Businesses in India ever resolve Disputes Speedily and Effectively?

Anurag K. Agarwal

Business disputes are like cancer which should be stopped from spreading as soon as possible. Litigation is the least favoured method of resolution for a variety of reasons-delay being the foremost. Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) methods like negotiation, mediation, conciliation, arbitration are currently in vogue. Unfortunately, there is a strong feeling in India that extra-legal methods provide timely solutions for business disputes. This does not augur well for the business environment. The paper examines the business dispute resolution scenario in India and provides suggestions for making it more speedy and effective in a legal manner.

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Working Papers | 2006

A First Cut Estimate of the Equity Risk Premium in India

Samir K. Barua and Jayanth R. Varma

We estimate the equity risk premium in India using data for the last 25 years. We address the shortcomings of existing indices by constructing our own total return index for the 1980s and early 1990s. We use our estimates of the extent of financial repression during this period to construct a series of the risk free rate in India going back to the early 1980s. We find that the equity risk premium is about 8¾% on a geometric mean basis and about 12½% on an arithmetic mean basis. There is no significant difference between the pre reform and post reform period: the premium has declined marginally on a geometric mean basis and has risen slightly on an arithmetic mean basis. The reason for this divergence between the sub period behaviour of the two means is the increase in the annualized standard deviation of stock market returns from less than 20% in the pre reform period to about 25% in the post reform period. The higher standard deviation depresses the geometric mean in the post reform period.

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Working Papers | 2006

An empirical investigation into randomly generated Euclidean symmetric traveling salesman problems

Diptesh Ghosh and Megha Sharma

The traveling salesman problem is one of the most well-solved hard combinatorial optimization problems. Any new algorithm or heuristic for the traveling salesman problem is empirically evaluated based on its performance on standard test instances, as well as on randomly generated instances. However, properties of randomly generated traveling salesman instances have not been reported in the literature. In this paper, we report the results from an empirical investigation on the properties of randomly generated Euclidean traveling salesman problem. Our experiments focus on the properties of the edge lengths and the distribution of the tour lengths of all tours in instances for symmetric traveling salesman problems.

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Working Papers | 2006

Missing Issues in the Debate on Reservation

Sebastian Morris

The issue of reservation has been presented as arising out of educational and social backwardness of the OBCs. Except in nomenclature there is no substantial evidence to show that most or even the majority of the 'jatis' that constitute the OBCs are educationally backward. The heterogeneity within what is an administrative grouping (and that too residually defined as non-upper caste and non SCST essentially) is far too large. And the systematic regional differences in the educational and economic achievements of the OBCs would not warrant the lazy position of class=caste from which the reservation agenda has been both presented and discussed. The assumed parallelism with SCST reservation are just not there. Neither the argument for creating a middle class, nor the need to overcome social ostracism and untouchability are relevant in this case. The issue is at best (to the extent that some of the OBC jatis are backward educationally) one of access which is overwhelming an issue of economic ability and performance of the state in the provision of educational services. Moreover the fact that as much as 20-25% of enrollment in higher education being from the OBCs makes us ask the question: Is the initiative that has the potential to divide the country worth addressing a non-problem or at best a most ill-stated one? The Supreme Court having placed 'social and educational equality' above equality under law, if it has to be true to the spirit and letter of this very position would have to address the issue of educational deprivation far more comprehensively than is presented by the reservationists. It cannot accept a report merely because it has the imprimatur of the executive. It needs to understand the nature of the unholy alliance of all political parties on this issue. Much of the deprivation has to do with performance of the state and its educational machinery. State failure in regulation of both public and private education, shameful underfunding of the public education system at the primary and secondary levels especially in much in much of north and central India, the wanton destruction of most of the universities leaving much of their fare all but worthless are the real problems. These now create a scarcity for quality education and that makes the issue of reservation politically appropriable in a most perverse and reprehensive manner and which could never solve either the problem of higher education or the problem of access that much of the OBCs (as much as the Indian population as a whole) face. The Supreme court must see through this game. After all it can insist on compulsory primary education and fully funded quality primary and secondary education to begin with, which could then start the process of the real problems being addressed.

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Working Papers | 2006

On Estimability of Parsimonious Term Structure Models: An Experiment with Three Popular Specifications

Vineet Virmani

This study addresses operational issues in estimation of parsimonious term structure models. When using price errors, objective function in term structure estimation is a highly non-linear function of the parameters. This necessary entails using numerical optimization techniques for estimation, which brings to fore the issue of (sensitivity of results to) the choice of initialization of the optimization routine. This study assesses the sensitivity of the final objective function value and the final parameter vector to the choice of the initial vector for three popular specifications, namely, Nelson-Siegel (1987), Svensson (1994), and Cox-Ingersoll-Ross (1985). It turns out that given the nature of the objective function, the choice of the starting vector is far from obvious in all three cases. There exist regions in the shape of the objective function in all three where a slight change in (seemingly reasonable) initial vector takes one far from optimum. Choice of the (range of) 'best' starting vector turns out to be an empirical matter. Grid search is recommended. One must first get to a subset of initial values which results in the objective function value near the minimum and then assess the sensitivity of the final parameter vector to those (subset of) initial values. The study illustrates the process using a typical trading day's data. [Preliminary Draft. Please Don't Quote]

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Working Papers | 2006

Assessing NSEs Daily Zero Coupon Yield Curve Estimates: A Comparison with Few Competing Alternatives

Vineet Virmani

This study assesses and compares, on select criteria of evaluation, the time series of daily term structure estimates provided by the National Stock Exchange (NSE) [using the Nelson-Siegel (1987; NS) methodology] with author's own estimates of NS, Svensson (1992; SV) and Cox-Ingersoll-Ross (1985; CIR). While no model comes across as best on all criteria of evaluation, NS as estimated by NSE (and in this study) turn out to be the worst of the lot. Wherever CIR comes out to be better than SV, however, the difference is only marginal. As none of the models came out to be best on all days, given the numerical tractability of parsimonious models and availability of relatively cheap computing resources, it is suggested that NSE report estimates based on 3/4 competing specifications and not just using NS, which should be phased out. A suitable alternative exists in SV. [Preliminary Draft. Please Dont Quote]

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Working Papers | 2006

A Likelihood Integrated Method for Exploratory Graphical Analysis of Change Point Problem with Directional Data

SenGupta Ashis and A. K. Laha

In this paper we introduce a new likelihood based method, called the likelihood integrated method, which is distinct from the well known integrated likelihood method. We use the likelihood integrated to propose a simple exploratory graphical analysis for the change point problem in the context of directional data. The method is applied to analysis of two real life data sets. The results obtained by application of this simple method are seen to be quite similar to those obtained earlier by different formal methods in most cases. Note: For softcopy of this paper, please contact the author(s) - email: arnab@iima.ac.in

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Working Papers | 2006

Checkmate! Winning the Game of Communication: A Study of Conversational Principles

Asha Kaul and Pandit Anuradha

Managerial communication in organizations can well be studied by using drama as a heuristic device to gain an understanding of the complexities governing structure of communication, goals of participants and application of conversational principles. The technique of learning/understanding communication by application of conversational principles and maxims to drama/theatre was applied to dialogue in three absurd plays, namely, The Zoo Story, Endgame, and The Chairs. Analysis indicated that principles and maxims of cooperation and politeness are essential but not necessary prerequisites for communication. Violations of one, namely, politeness principle do not lead to cessation of communication. Communication continues despite violations, for fructification of a higher goal than is evident at the textual level of the dialogue. Extrapolating the findings in the context of the managerial situation, we found the context/situation to be the most significant variable in determining violation of conversational principles

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Working Papers | 2006

Bangalore Cluster: Evolution, Growth and Challenges

Rakesh Basant

The dynamism and persistence of competitiveness among industrial clusters, even in the wake of globalization and liberalization in the 1990s, has led researchers to explore the causes of dynamic efficiencies at the cluster level. Given its dynamism, the ICT cluster in Bangalore, India has attracted much research and media attention. It is often referred to as the Silicon Valley of India. While the IT sector has brought the city into limelight, it has a fairly diverse portfolio of activities with firms manufacturing machine tools, telecom equipment, electronics products and to some extent auto-components located here. In recent years, the city has also emerged as a premier bio-tech cluster in the country. This paper pools together evidence to explore reasons why Bangalore emerged as a high-tech cluster and the nature of advantages that has contributed to its growth.

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Working Papers | 2006

Unified Concept of Bottleneck

Chatterjee A K and Saral Mukherjee

The term `bottleneck` has been extensively used in operations management literature. Management paradigms like the Theory of Constraints focus on the identification and exploitation of bottlenecks. Yet, we show that the term has not been rigorously defined. We provide a classification of bottleneck definitions available in literature and discuss several myths associated with the concept of bottleneck. The apparent diversity of definitions raises the question whether it is possible to have a single bottleneck definition which has as much applicability in high variety job shops as in mass production environments. The key to the formulation of an unified concept of bottleneck lies in relating the concept of bottleneck to the concept of shadow price of resources. We propose an universally applicable bottleneck definition based on the concept of average shadow price. We discuss the procedure for determination of bottleneck values for diverse production environments. The Law of Diminishing Returns is shown to be a sufficient but not necessary condition for the equivalence of the average and the marginal shadow price. The equivalence of these two prices is proved for several environments. Bottleneck identification is the first step in resource acquisition decisions faced by managers. The definition of bottleneck presented in the paper has the potential to not only reduce ambiguity regarding the meaning of the term but also open a new window to the formulation and analysis of a rich set of problems faced by managers.

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