Home Menu
icon-menu-close.svg

Faculty & Research

Faculty & Research

Research Productive

Show result

Clear
Search Query :
Area :
Search Query :
3846 items in total found

Journal Articles | 2022

Pre-Kautilyan period: Crucible of pro-economic ideas and practices

Satish Deodhar

Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute

A number of studies have been conducted in the recent past throwing light on Kautilya’s contribution to economic policy. In his treatise Arthashastra, Kautilya informs that his contribution was based on received knowledge and gives credit to his predecessors. Unfortunately, the specialized works of the predecessors have been lost with the passage of time. I have attempted to scout and collate the economic notions that have appeared interspersed in the available Sanskrit treatises written prior to Arthashastra. Kautilya’s Arthashastra must have evolved from the crucible of such literature. In this context I discuss the four-fold classifications of purusharthas, ashramas, and varnas referenced in ancient texts and their attendant economic implications in the society then. I also cover the economic notions at the macro and institutional level which include policies of a welfare state, practical ideas about public goods, market facilitation, property rights, labour relations and unions, coinage, taxation, and budget deficit.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2022

Prospect theory preferences and global mutual fund flows

Nilesh Gupta, Anil V. Mishra, and Joshy Jacob

Journal of International Money and Finance

We examine the influence of Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT) characteristics of fund returns on investment flows with a cross-country data of equity mutual funds. We find that a larger CPT value of the style-adjusted past returns is associated with higher fund flows in the subsequent quarter. The impact is greater for retail-oriented funds, relatively younger funds, and those with higher active share. While funds that score high on the CPT value attract incremental fund flows, they earn a lower alpha than their peers in the following year. The sensitivity of fund flows to the CPT characteristics is higher in countries with greater individualism and short-term orientation. The results are robust to several additional tests and hold across various subsamples of our data. The findings imply that investors have misplaced expectations about the future performance of funds that show higher CPT values and the fund managers cater to these investor preferences.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2022

From fear to courage: Indian lesbians’ and gays’ quest for Inclusive ethical organizations

Ernesto Noronha, Nidhi S. Bisht, and Premilla D’Cruz

Journal of Business Ethics

This paper focusses on the experiences of Indian lesbians and gays (LGs) who are subjected to unethical acts of workplace bullying which get manifested through constant guesswork, comments and questioning about their sexual identity in the hostile Indian context. Given this, LG participants usually opt for secrecy and lead a double life, using ‘passing’ and ‘covering’ strategies to manage economic, social and psychological risks. Nonetheless, this paper rewrites the negative tenor of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transexuals research by underscoring how LG participants move from fear to courage in their endeavour to live authentic lives while considering the broader organizational and social context. We argue that their courage is manifested mainly through deliberate micro-disclosures and a sense of defiance which can be enhanced if organizations are designed to be more inclusive and ethical. Consequently, participants defined inclusive ethical organizations as having conducive environments with trustworthy, supportive, secure, fair, unbiased and safe non-discriminatory policies open to the idea of diverse sexual orientations. Our findings point to the fact that, first and foremost, organizations must be crafted and sustained to be courageous within a hostile social climate, for employees to overcome their fears.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2022

Generic competition and the incentives for early-stage pharmaceutical innovation

Lee Branstetter, Chirantan Chatterjee, and Matthew J. Higgins

Research Policy

What impact has rising generic competition had on the nature and direction of pharmaceutical innovation? We find broad-based, strong evidence that pharmaceutical companies have diverted their new drug development efforts away from therapeutic markets already well-served by generic drugs. We also find that increasing generic competition induces firms to shift their R&D activity toward more biologic-based products and away from chemical-based products. We conclude by discussing potential implications of our results for long-run innovation policy.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2022

Big-4 auditors and audit quality: A novel firm life-cycle approach

Sonali Jain and Sobhesh Kumar Agarwalla

Meditari Accountancy Research

Purpose – Firm-specific factors such as size, profitability, growth, risk and complexity, in addition to agency-related issues determine both auditor selection and firm life-cycle stage. This paper aims to examine whether and how the effect of Big-4 auditors (B4As) on client firms’ audit quality varies across firms’ life-cycle stages. Design/methodology/approach – The sample comprises 1,813 firm-year observations in India’s emerging economy from 2011 to 2020. The Modified Jones model and Jones (signed, unsigned) model are used to compute discretionary accruals/audit quality. The authors use Koh et al.’s (2015) methodology to determine the firm life cycle. Findings – The authors’ key findings show that the client firms employing B4As have superior audit quality than those employing non-Big-4 auditors (NB4As). The authors also show that the life-cycle stage significantly impacts the relationship between B4As and a firm’s audit quality. Furthermore, B4A client firms report superior audit quality vis-à-vis NB4A firms only in the birth- and decline-stages. The audit quality of growth- and mature-stage B4A and NB4A client firms is not significantly different. Practical implications – Implications for managers include the decision to hire B4As. Given that B4As earn a significant fee premium, managers leading birth- and decline-stage firms should hire B4As, while managers of growth- and mature-stage firms should not. Originality/value – To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the moderating effect of the firm life-cycle stage on the selection of B4As and their impact on audit quality.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2022

Disentangling reciprocal relationships between R&D intensity, profitability and capital market performance: A panel VAR analysis

Amit Karna, Christos Mavis, and Ansgar Richter

Long Range Planning

Research and development (R&D) investments are strategic choices that firms make to create and sustain competitive advantage. Extant literature proposes that firms’ R&D investments and their profitability and capital market performance are reciprocally related. However, the direction of these relationships and their temporal nature are unclear. We take a real options perspective to argue that the long-run firm performance effects of R&D investments are better than their short-term ones, and that the initial level of R&D intensity influences the nature of these relationships. We apply panel vector autoregression (P-VAR) to a sample of 6623 U.S. firms over the 1990–2020 period in order to test our hypotheses. Our results indicate that increases in R&D intensity have negative effects on profitability in the short term, yet these effects diminish relatively quickly. The effects of increases in R&D intensity on capital market performance are positive and persist over time. Consistent with our predictions, they are contingent on the initial levels of R&D intensity and performance. The findings are fundamentally in line with the real options perspective employed here, yet they add important nuance to our understanding of when, how, and under which conditions R&D investments and firm performance affect one another.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2022

Impostor phenomenon and identity-based microaggression among hispanic/Latinx Individuals in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics: A Qualitative Exploration

Devasmita Chakraverty

Violence and Gender

Impostor phenomenon is defined as a psychological condition when some successful people do not fully ascribe their success to ability or competence, but attribute it to luck, generosity from others, or misjudgment, thereby experiencing an internal conflict. Microaggression is defined as subtle disparaging behavior that consciously or unconsciously discriminates people based on their background, personal identity, and group membership. Both impostor phenomenon and microaggression are commonly experienced in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, especially by women and BIPOC individuals—black, indigenous, or other person of color. Hence, the connection between microaggression and impostor phenomenon among BIPOC individuals needs deeper exploration. This qualitative study examined the research question: How do Hispanic/Latinx PhD students and postdoctorates in STEM describe impostor phenomenon and microaggression based on ethnic identity? U.S.-based participants were recruited using convenience sampling and snowball sampling. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 29 participants who self-reported experiencing impostor phenomenon. Interview transcripts were coded and analyzed inductively using constant comparison to develop themes. Twenty-two of the participants (18 women) experienced microaggression during training based on their Hispanic/Latinx identity. Microaggressive comments were made by faculty members, peers, and others in academia. Microaggression and impostor phenomenon were related through “othering” or feeling like outsiders, creating a sense of (un)belonging in STEM fields.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2022

Impact of operational fragility on stock returns: Lessons from COVID‐19 crisis

Avijit Bansal, Balagopal Gopalakrishnan, Joshy Jacob, and Pranjal Srivastava

International Review of Finance

We examine how the market valuation of firms varies on account of their operational fragility that makes them vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the data on plant location that uniquely identifies the vulnerability of firms to operational disruptions, we find that firms with plants located in zones susceptible to higher infections earn significantly lower returns. For firms with high operational fragility, the marginal value of financial flexibility and operating flexibility is higher. The adverse impact of the operational fragility is lower for firms affiliated with the larger business groups. The paper identifies unique channels associated with the pandemic that impact firm value.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2022

A two-stage integer programming model considering transaction equivalence for privacy preservation

Srikumar Krishnamoorthy

Computers and Operations Research

Preserving privacy is one of the fundamental requirements of firms that share data with their business partners for building advanced data mining models. Firms often aim to protect the disclosure of sensitive knowledge or information discovered during the data mining process. In this study, we investigate the problem of Frequent Itemset Hiding (FIH) which aims to hide sensitive itemset relationships present in a transactional database. We propose a two-stage integer programming model that maximizes the proportion of unaltered transactions in the sanitized database and protects sensitive itemset relationships. The model exploits the concept of transactional equivalence and significantly reduces the size of the FIH problem. In addition, our model enables the identification of solutions with minimal side effects. We conduct an experimental evaluation on both real and synthetic databases to show that our approach is scalable and produces a sanitized database with maximum accuracy. The generated solution is also found to have lower side effects (itemset information loss) compared to other state-of-the-art methods. Our experiments on very large problem instances show problem size reductions of one to three orders of magnitude. The proposed approach is quite attractive and practically useful for solving large-scale FIH problem instances and preserving privacy in increasingly shared and big data-driven organizational environments.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2022

Informal land leasing in rural India persists because it is credible

Yugank Goyal, Pranab Ranjan Choudhury, and Ranjan Kumar Ghosh

Land Use Policy

While insecure property rights are considered ‘perverse’ with respect to development, we examine what are the features most amenable for their persistence. Applying a Credibility Thesis framework in the context of rural land tenancy relations in India, that are largely held through private arrangements, we try to understand if there are inherent preferences to the existing informal structure of land leasing. An in-depth primary household survey across four states of India reveals that farmers rely on customary, informal mode of leasing arrangements because of their functionality in terms of no paperwork, easy accessibility, swifter modes of payment and prompt conflict resolution. Informality makes the existing institutional arrangement ‘credible’ in the eyes of both the tenants and owners. This raises the questions of whether policy prescriptions on intricate land related issues should entail appreciation of prevailing informal tenant customs, regulating them, or simply letting them be and realign agrarian support and delivery systems around this embedded informality.

Go to link
Read More
IIMA