Social Capital, Household Welfare and Poverty in Burkina Faso

This paper investigates empirically the importance of socialcapital, in the form of local associations and networks, forthe welfare of rural households in Burkina Faso. It draws ona unique database combining standard information on householdwelfare with multidimensional measures of social capital. Theanalysis finds that higher levels of social capital are associatedwith higher household per capita expenditures and better accessto credit. The distribution of social capital was found to bemore equal than that of other assets. Poor households and thosewho own little land obtain a higher return from social capitalthan other households.     

Managing growth: Human resource management challenges facing the Indian software industry

Indian software industry has had a phenomenal growth in the last two decades and is expected to sustain this momentum in the foreseeable future. Based on content analysis of 25 cases, the paper identifies several human resource management challenges: managing human resources in globally distributed team, shortage of software professionals having sufficient knowledge and competencies, low-skilled nature of the work, lack of well-developed HR systems and processes, high employee turnover, lack of work-life balance, and the problems associated with the use of contract employees. The paper develops a model for managing growth linking the various variables emerging from the study.     

An adjustment procedure for predicting systematic risk

This paper looks at the currently available beta adjustment techniques and suggests a multiple root-linear model to adjust for the regression tendency of betas. Our empirical investigate on indicates that cross-sectional betas are not normally distributed, but their distribution tends to normal after a square-root transformation. The evidence from the Box-Cox regression model and the multivariate normality observed among betas after the transformation, make the functional form of our model correct. Also, we observe that the disturbance term of the multiple root-linear model is well behaved. These findings make the ordinary least squares estimates unbiased and efficient. Finally, the mean square and extreme errors are found to be lower when our adjustment procedure is used vis-à-vis the existing procedures.     

Keynes and the International Monetary System revisited (a contextual and conjectural essay)

This paper attempts to answer the question: How would Keynes have viewed and reacted to the principal contemporary international monetary issues, namely, the framework of management, liquidity, the exchange rate regime, the adjustment mechanism, and the problem of developing countries? Keynes would arguably have favored a variant of crawling pegs rather than free floats for exchange rates, and a symmetrical (compulsory) adjustment mechanism for surplus as well as debtor countries, but would have been averse to the SDR link while welcoming the flexibility of the International Monetary Fund in meeting the requirements of developing countries consistently with the uniform treatment of all members.     

Grain price stabilization in India: Evaluation of policy alternatives

Stabilization of prices is an important element of food policy in India as in most other countries — both developing and eveloped. However, since the magnitude of grain stocks held for this purpose as well as the costs of physical storage have become prohibitively high, there is now a need for finding cost-effective alternatives including non interventionist and market-oriented methods for price stabilization. In this paper we consider the case of rice and wheat which are staple foodgrains in India. We make a comparison between alternative price stabilization policies including that of holding buffer stocks in terms of their impact on domestic price stability, producer and consumer welfare and government costs. A multi-market equilibrium framework is used where private storage, consumption, supply and prices of rice and wheat are determined simultaneously. Indian exports and imports are assumed to affect world prices. The alternative price stabilizing mechanisms are ranked according to both the criteria, welfare and price stability achieved. The main findings are as follows. The ranking of alternatives varies with the criterion used. Greater price stability need not necessarily imply greater welfare. The option of variable levies on private external trade turns out to be the most inexpensive and that of domestic buffer stocks the costliest in achieving price stability. Further, the efficacy of buffer stocks and subsidy to private storage in stabilizing prices is lower under free trade as compared to the case where the economy is closed to private external trade.     

Tournament Rituals, Category Dynamics, and Field Configuration: The Case of the Booker Prize

abstract    In this article we theorize the ways in which tournament rituals, in the form of prominent industry award ceremonies, configure organizational fields. We review field theory to distil four criteria to which field-configuring mechanisms should conform. We undertake an archival study of the Booker Prize for Fiction to explore how this tournament ritual has configured the field of contemporary English-language literature by championing the distinctive category of post-colonial fiction.     

Customer loyalty in e-commerce: an exploration of its antecedents and consequences

This paper investigates the antecedents and consequences of customer loyalty in an online business-to-consumer (B2C) context. We identify eight factors (the 8Cs—customization, contact interactivity, care, community, convenience, cultivation, choice, and character) that potentially impact e-loyalty and develop scales to measure these factors. Data collected from 1,211 online customers demonstrate that all these factors, except convenience, impact e-loyalty. The data also reveal that e-loyalty has an impact on two customer-related outcomes: word-of- mouth promotion and willingness to pay more.     

Theory-Driven Choice Models

We explore issues in theory-driven choice modeling by focusing on partial-equilibrium models of dynamic structural demand with forward-looking decision-makers, full equilibrium models that integrate the supply side, integration of bounded rationality in dynamic structural models of choice and public policy implications of these models.     

The Global Market for Agricultural Machinery and Equipment

Growth in the current-dollar sales of agricultural machinery and equipment was almost six percent per annum during 2000-2005.1 This was much faster than the 2.6 percent growth for agricultural output and the 1.2 percent rate for population in the same period. JEL Classification L64