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3846 items in total found

Journal Articles | 2018

Can highway development promote employement growth in India?

Sandip Chakrabarti

Transport Policy

India has embarked on an ambitious highway development program to significantly improve interstate road transport connectivity. Between 2000 and 2015, total length of India's national highway network has nearly doubled and 4 + lane share of the national highways has increased from 2 to 20%, along with associated improvements in safety and surface quality. National highway development is considered as a tool to promote employment growth by stimulating economic activities and attracting foreign investments. As India's central government continues to increase budget allocations for national highway projects in anticipation of generating more jobs, this study empirically investigates whether past investments can be linked to employment growth. I analyze changes in non-agricultural private sector employment over a 10-year period (2003–2012) across 25 states in response to changes in the density (lane-km per unit area) of national highways, controlling for other factors affecting employment. Using a series of static (pooled ordinary least squares, random-effects and fixed-effects) and dynamic (random- and fixed-effects with first-order autoregressive or AR(1) disturbances, and system GMM or generalized method of moments) panel regressions, I find that 10% increase in national highway density in India is associated with 1–6% (depending on model specification and estimation approach) increase in private sector employment, all else equal. This paper provides first empirical evidence suggesting that India's national highway development efforts have produced positive employment benefits in the past. In addition to contributing to transportation planning scholarship, the findings are expected to inform policy-makers in India as they develop future highway investment plans aimed, in part, at economic development. This paper will also be useful to decision-makers in other developing countries with comparable policy environments.

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Journal Articles | 2018

Gross profit manipulation through classification

Sakina H. Poonawal and Neerav Nagar

Journal of Business Research

The existing research on classification shifting has examined the manipulation of core earnings through shifting of core expenses to special items keeping the GAAP earnings constant. We examine the manipulation of gross profits through shifting of costs of goods sold to operating expenses keeping core earnings constant. We find that managers, on average, misclassify costs of goods sold as operating expenses in order to just meet prior period's gross margin. We also find that managers shift costs of goods sold to both selling, general and administrative expenses and research and development expenses. However, they are more likely to shift costs of goods sold to the latter.

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Journal Articles | 2018

Teamwork of temporary employees: multiple perspectives

Saikat Chakraborty and Sushmita Chakravarti

Human Resource Management International Digest

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to understand the teamwork of temporary employees by taking into consideration the impact and role of the management’s perspective, temporary employee’s perspective and contextual perspective.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on reviews of workplace literature pertaining to temporary employments, conversations with managers and temporary and permanent employees of organizations engaging temporary employees on a perennial basis have been thematically analyzed.

Findings

Multiple perspectives of teamwork of temporary employees exist in organizations. However, one rarely finds the interaction and collective treatment of these perspectives, which are critical to understanding teamwork of temporary employees. The paper reports on these perspectives.

Practical implications

With rise in temporary employments in organizations and teamwork being crucial to participative work cultures, organizations need to consider multiple perspectives of the phenomenon before making an informed decision.

Originality/value

There is limited research that delves into teamwork of temporary employees despite the phenomenon becoming increasingly significant in organizations. This paper offers an approach to look at teamwork of temporary employees through multiple perspectives.

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Journal Articles | 2018

The Aadhaar Debate: Where are the sociologists?

Reetika Khera

Contribution to Indian Sociology

The Aadhaar project which aims to provide all residents in India with a unique identity number requires much more attention from sociologists of India. There are several areas of research where sociologists can help: one, the implications of new technologies of surveillance for (a) privacy and (b) society; two, the repercussions of the desire for social ordering and control and technocratic solutionism for people in their interactions with the state demands fuller sociological study. This brief note attempts to outline some of the issues that call out for enquiry.

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Journal Articles | 2018

Estimating labour quality index for India

Ravindra H. Dholakia and Kadiyala Virinchi S

Economic and Political Weekly

Using the latest consumer price index (combined) series, it is found that the dynamics underlying India’s inflationary process have changed substantially. Significant reduction found in the inflation persistence reflects anchoring of inflationary expectations. Moreover, it is the headline inflation that reverts to the core and not vice versa, as was assumed so far. It implies the absence of any significant second-round effects. These features need to be taken into account for any policy analysis. Attempting to forecast inflation using various econometric techniques, it is found that a combination of alternative models based on mean square errors improves forecast accuracy as compared to any individual model.

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Journal Articles | 2018

Estimating labour quality index for India.

Ravindra H. Dholakia

Journal of Labour Economics

Present paper provides a detailed critique of the traditional methodology of taking wage differential as equal to the differential of marginal productivity of labour and proposes to replace it by the differential of average productivity of labour types. The purpose in this paper is not to provide a concrete estimate of the labour quality index, but to discuss possibility of following an alternative method and expand the scope of measurement from the traditional age–sex–education classification to a wider range including some directly non-quantifiable labour qualities. The traditional method and the previous efforts made in India ignored classifications of workers based on the urban–rural residence, organized–unorganized sectors, public versus private sector employment, self-employed versus hired workers versus casual employees, and health and nutritional status. If all these qualitative aspects are properly considered, we can get a reasonably accurate marginal contribution of formal education, urbanization, privatization, self-employment and health and nutrition status of workers to the economic growth.

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Journal Articles | 2018

Food waste due to retail power in suppy chains: Evidence from Sweden

Ranjan Ghosh and Mattias Eriksson

Global Food Security

Trading practices such as the take-back agreement (TBA) can become a tool for retailers to exert coercive power over suppliers when market concentration is high. We explore the implications of TBAs for the Swedish bread industry using unique company data from a premium bread supplier and find that powerful buyers over-order and, thereby, waste. This supplier faced 30% returns on total volume produced in the period 2011–2015 and had to bear the entire cost of bread rejections, collection and disposal. It received payment only for bread sold to end-customers, not the quantity supplied. To our knowledge, this is first time there is substantial evidence of the negative consequences such trading practices lead to with respect to waste. The EU has been considering banning the practices of ‘forcing the supplier to pay for wasted product’ and ‘a buyer returning unsold food products to the supplier’. However, such behaviour is very difficult to prove, given that suppliers-buyers are either tied up with bilateral confidential contracts or operate under relational norms. Yet, TBAs are common in certain food supply chains, presenting a global challenge for prevention of food waste and requiring deeper policy engagement.

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Contract terms are common sense

Books | 2018

Contract terms are common sense

Akhileshwar Pathak

Penguin Random House India

Dissent on Aadhaar: Big data meets big brother

Books | 2018

Dissent on Aadhaar: Big data meets big brother

Reetika Khera

Orient Black Swan

Land use change trends of Indian cities- A bird's eye view: Vulnerabilities of unplanned urban growth

Books | 2018

Land use change trends of Indian cities- A bird's eye view: Vulnerabilities of unplanned urban growth

Amit Garg, Vidhee Avashia and Shrutika Parihar

Sage

IIMA