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3846 items in total found

Journal Articles | 2024

Structural mean models for instrumented difference-in-differences

Tat-Thang Vo, Ting Ye, Ashkan Ertefaie, Samrat Roy, James Flory, Sean Hennessy, Stijn Vansteelandt, Dylan S Small

In the standard difference-in-differences research design, the parallel trend assumption can be violated when the effect of some unmeasured confounders on the outcome trend is different between the treated and untreated populations. Progress can be made if there is an exogenous variable that (i) does not directly influence the change in outcome (i.e. the outcome trend) except through influencing the change in exposure (i.e. the exposure trend), and (ii) is not related to the unmeasured exposure - outcome confounders on the trend scale. Such exogenous variable is called an instrument for difference-in-differences. For continuous outcomes that lend themselves to linear modelling, so-called instrumented difference-in-differences methods have been proposed. In this paper, we will suggest novel multiplicative structural mean models for instrumented difference-in-differences, which allow one to identify and estimate the average treatment effect that is stable over time on the multiplicative scale, in the whole population or among the treated, when (i) a valid instrument for difference-in-differences is available and (ii) there is no carry-over effect across periods. We discuss the identifiability of these models, then develop efficient semi-parametric estimation approaches that allow the use of flexible, data-adaptive or machine learning methods to estimate the nuisance parameters. We apply our proposal on health care data to investigate the risk of moderate to severe weight gain under sulfonylurea treatment compared to metformin treatment, among new users of antihyperglycemic drugs.

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Working Papers | 2024

Liquidated Damages in India: Concepts, Enforceability, and Drafting Considerations

M P Ram Mohan, Gaurav Ray, Promode Murugavelu, & Jeeri Sanjana Reddy

Damages in contract law play a crucial role in compensating parties for losses resulting from breaches of contractual obligations. Liquidated damages clauses promote commercial certainty and party autonomy. Section 74 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 codifies the law on liquidated damages. Over the years, courts have employed several evaluative criteria and interpretative tools when deciding upon the validity, scope and essential aspects of liquidated damages clauses. This paper analyses the principles governing liquidated damages and attempts to use this analysis to provide a guide in drafting a valid and legally enforceable liquidated damages clause.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Stochastic vehicle routing with delivery choice

Prahalad Venkateshan, Kamlesh Mathur

We consider the problem of designing delivery routes for vehicles where the vendor has the choice of how much of the demand from a customer to fulfill. The customer demand is known a priori only as a probability distribution. Exact customer demand is known only after visiting the customer. Different customers are able to negotiate different prices for each unit of product with the vendor. Given a route, the objective is to decide at each customer location, how much demand to satisfy so as to maximize expected profit taking into account a linear penalty cost for unfulfilled demand and the vehicle routing costs. In this article, we develop several new structural results for this problem. We illustrate how these structural results can be embedded in different heuristic frameworks commonly used for deterministic vehicle routing problems. This helps develop efficient routes for a single vehicle as well as a multiple vehicle scenario for this stochastic variant. For small-sized problems that allow for exhaustive enumeration, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the illustrated heuristic. For larger problem instances, based on structural results, we develop methods that allow the heuristic to run more efficiently than otherwise. Results are reported on instances based on benchmark instances drawn from literature for upward of 100 customers and vehicle capacity up to 600 units. Computational times needed to heuristically solve such problems are within 1 100 s.

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Journal Articles | 2024

A field experiment on marketplace literacy and self-help group membership in subsistence marketplaces

Madhu Viswanathan, Arun Sreekumar, Saravana Jaikumar, Shantanu Dutta

We conducted a field experiment to gain marketing insights into low-income, subsistence consumers in emerging markets. We examined two phenomena– marketplace literacy which is knowledge and skills about the marketplace to overcome challenges with low income and relatively lower literacy, and membership in self-help groups that has empowered women around the world. We studied how these factors influence strategies for managing product quantities essential for day-to-day survival in contexts with resource constraints. In a prospective design, low-income women were randomly assigned to self-help groups and marketplace literacy education, with pre- and post-measurement. Our findings suggest that, whereas self-help group membership and marketplace literacy help women in low-income households improve their strategies to manage product quantities, the interaction of these two variables leads to counterintuitive outcomes. Our findings provide a nuanced understanding of how consumer and marketing insights can empower consumers in resource-constrained settings to become more effective.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Mutation of the Trademark Doctrine: Analysing actionable use to reconcile brand identities with constitutional safeguards

"M P Ram Mohan Aditya Gupta"

With continuous and consistent use, trademarks can come to signify opulence, luxury, and dependability; and become cultural icons. The modern trademark doctrine must accommodate these realities of the marketplace while, at the same time, accommodating the flourishing exchange of expressive uses through unauthorised use of trademarks. This push-and-pull has resulted in the complete obliteration of what were already obscure boundaries between the expressive and marketing spheres of trademark law. The present study examines the normative foundations of the modern trademark doctrine, drawing from American, English, and European trademark jurisprudence. These foundations are then extrapolated to Indian trademark law to create a workable limitation of the mutating trademark doctrine through recalibrating the actionable use requirement. The authors attempt to discern the normative foundations of the individual cause of actions in the infringement liability and argue that such foundations should serve to delimit the scope of protection offered therein. Given the relevance of expressive uses in trademark law, the present study also examines the relevance of constitutional and policy-based arguments in determining trademark infringement liability. We find that within Indian judicial discourse, there is an alarming disconnect between the normative foundations of infringement liability and their interpretation. This affects the interpretation of the limitations offered by the trademark statute and can potentially push trademark law in troubling directions.

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Working Papers | 2024

Washed Away: Industrial Capital, Labor, and Floods

Anish Sugathan, Arpit Shah, Deepak Malghan

This study quantifies the dynamic impacts of floods on industrial capital and labor in India using a novel dataset combining geocoded flood events with firm facility-level data from 2000 to 2021. Employing a stacked difference-in-differences approach with carefully matched controls, we uncover persistent negative effects of floods on firms’ assets and employment, with striking heterogeneity across sectors and regions. In the post-flood period, we estimate declines from mean values in total assets of 46.1% (16.68 billion INR ≈ 225 million USD), employment of 49.0% (8.20 thousand workers), and the wage bill of 74.5% (5.52 billion INR ≈ 74 million USD). The sectoral impacts are highly varied: the information technology and communication, manufacturing, and utilities sectors experience significant declines in assets, while the financial services sector exhibits growth. Mapping the spatial distribution of flood events and industrial facilities reveals pronounced regional heterogeneity in flood exposure and economic impacts. Adding nuance to the empirical investigation of the “creative destruction” hypothesis, we find limited evidence of systematic capital reallocation toward better-performing sectors, suggesting instead that floods generate sector-specific impacts with varying recovery patterns. These findings challenge assumptions of rapid post-disaster equilibration and have important implications for policymakers and firm managers in developing sector-specific strategies to mitigate the adverse impacts of floods in an increasingly climate-uncertain world.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Unraveling prosumption behavior for online reviews during environmental uncertainty: A stimulus-response perspective

Manisha Rathi, Adrija Majumdar, Sawan Rathi

Online reviews are effective information-sharing tools due to their word-of-mouth characteristics. The extant literature has considered reviews as independent variables that influence business performance, while the environmental factors shaping these reviews remain under-explored. We examine the impact of COVID-19-related environmental uncertainties on changes in review prosumption (production and consumption) behavior. Based on the stimulus-response theory, with COVID-19 as the stimulus and prosumption as the response, we examined the changes in the characteristics of online reviews. Using the difference-in-differences methodology, we analyze online reviews of restaurants in two US cities that experienced different levels of COVID-19 impact. On the production side, we find an increased use of contextual terms and negative sentiments. On the consumption side, we find an increase in review usefulness and a decline in funniness. The results are robust, supported by coarsened exact matching and falsification tests. We conclude with a discussion of the study’s implications and contributions.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Punjab's Draft Farm Policy: Missing markets for the cooperative model

Sukhpal Singh

A policy for Punjab agriculture has been long overdue given that it has been facing an agrarian crisis for the last 30 years. Many attempts were made in the past which did not fructify into a policy. In early 2023, a committee was formed to formulate a policy for the agricultural sector, without any terms of reference. The report submitted in October 2023 was made public only in September 2024. This article examines the major recommandations of the draft policy on issues faced by the state’s farm sector and their weaknesses. 

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Journal Articles | 2024

Digital technologies exacerbating mission drift in microfinance institutions: Evidence from India

Nidhi S. Bisht, Ernesto Noronha, Arun Kumar Tripathy

Digital technologies (DTs) are increasingly recognized as crucial in addressing social issues related to inequality and enhancing the well-being and agency of socially marginalized groups. We however, provide evidence that, instead of alleviating social inequalities, use of DTs (re)produced and exacerbated these inequalities in disparate forms, for an already marginalized population. Based on a qualitative study of employees from five microfinance institutions (MFIs) in India that offer uncollateralized group loans to poor rural women, our findings demonstrate how the pursuit of financial gains through DTs in providing microfinance exacerbated mission drift in MFIs, leading to reduced quality and depth of outreach. The use of DTs undermined social and human capital development — both crucial for alleviating poverty — and widened exclusion rather than bridging the gap. We explicate the quality of outreach (i.e., quality of services provided) as an additional dimension of social outreach, alongside the depth of outreach (i.e., reaching poorer borrowers) for understanding mission drift. Our findings call for consideration of existing intersectional social inequalities when leveraging DTs for social causes.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Salience of social identities in explaining homeownership patterns in India

Ashish Gupta, Prashant Das, Abhiman Das

Indian society presents heterogeneity across two identities – that is, religion and caste – that lead to heterogenous economic outcomes, but affirmative action is mostly applicable to caste. Our empirical models affirm that economically less secure households have a higher homeownership propensity in India. Minority religions and backward castes also have a significantly higher propensity to own homes. This is in sharp contrast to findings in the US where minority households are associated with lower homeownership rates. Further, religious and caste-based identities in India lead to different household behaviours in differing demographic mixes. Religious identity in India is more salient than caste identity in explaining differing homeownership patterns.

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