Developments in Consumer Protection in India

This paper surveys the major developments in the field of consumer protection in India since 1984, when the statutory provisions for regulating unfair trade practices were incorporated for the first time.Among the developments described in the paper is the strengthening of provisions for consumer protection through amendments to the Act regulating restrictive and monopolistic trade practices (the MTRP Act). Public-sector undertakings and co-operative societies have been brought within the purview of the Act, and consumers have obtained the right to participate in inquiry proceedings before the MRTP Commission.Consumers and their associations have been given the right to seek redress of grievances arising out of the violation of certain pieces of legislation, including the Drugs and Cosmetics Act. The Consumer Protection Act, 1986, was enacted in order to provide speedy and inexpensive redress of consumers' grievances. Redress can now be sought before any consumer court also for negligence or deficiency in medical services.The Bureau of Indian Standards Act, 1986, has strengthened the measures for the standardisation and quality control of manufactured goods.A Consumer Welfare Fund has been set up to provide financial assistance to voluntary consumer organisations and for the general development of consumer movement in the country. A spurt in voluntary consumer organisations in different parts of the country can also be observed.Other developments include the establishment of a separate Department of Consumer Affairs in the Union Government and the setting up of a Consumer Product Testing Laboratory.     

Complementarities and competition: Unpacking the drivers of entrants' technology choices in the solar photovoltaic industry

Entrants in new industries pursue distinct technologies in hopes of winning the technology competition and achieving sustainable competitive advantage. We draw on the complementary assets framework to predict entrants' technology choices in an emerging industry. Evidence from the global solar photovoltaic industry supports our arguments that entrants are more likely to choose technologies with higher technical performance and for which key complementary assets are available in the ecosystem. However, diversifying entrants are more likely to trade off superior performance for complementary asset availability whereas start‐up entrants are more likely to trade off complementary asset availability for superior performance. This difference is largely due to diversifying entrants with pre‐entry capabilities related to the industry. The study offers a novel illustration of how complementarities and competition shape entry strategies. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Singapore and the New Regionalism: Bilateral Trade Linkages with Japan and the US

Free Trade Areas (FTAs) have recently become an integral part of Singapore trade policy. This paper discusses the reasons behind Singapore's recent embracement of ‘new regionalism’ with particular reference to the proposals to form FTAs with Japan and the US. The paper goes on to examine various aspects of Singapore's trade linkages with the two economic superpowers in some detail. Popular discussion of FTAs gives one the appearance that such a trade policy is entirely benign. The paper sounds a cautionary note, highlighting some reasons to be concerned with Singapore's recent embracement of the ‘new regionalism’.     

Social media,an emerging platform for relationship building: A study of engagement with nongovernment organizations in India

The purpose of this study is to explore the major determinants of nongovernment organizations (NGOs) engagement and relationship building on social media in India. Netnography with a metaphoric grounded analysis is used for the data analysis to identify these determinants, and a conceptual framework is proposed to inform the strategic direction of NGOs. The findings suggest that supporters engage with NGOs largely for personal and organizational reasons. Emotions, trust, and information needs emerge as the primary personal drivers for engagement, whereas organizational accountability, performance, brand image, and transparency emerge as organizational drivers. Behavioural intention mediates the relationship between the drivers of engagement and supporter contributions. The study suggests that as the number of supporters on social media platforms is rapidly increasing, NGOs should recognize the importance of the supporter experience while designing their marketing strategies. Given the peculiarity of supporter behaviour in relationship building by NGOs, the inclusion of more supporters may improve the welfare of society.     

Forecasting volatility of crude oil futures using a GARCH–RNN hybrid approach

Volatility is an important element for various financial instruments owing to its ability to measure the risk and reward value of a given financial asset. Owing to its importance, forecasting volatility has become a critical task in financial forecasting. In this paper, we propose a suite of hybrid models for forecasting volatility of crude oil under different forecasting horizons. Specifically, we combine the parameters of generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) and Glosten–Jagannathan–Runkle (GJR)-GARCH with long short-term memory (LSTM) to create three new forecasting models named GARCH–LSTM, GJR-LSTM, and GARCH-GJRGARCH LSTM in order to forecast crude oil volatility of West Texas Intermediate on different forecasting horizons and compare their performance with the classical volatility forecasting models. Specifically, we compare the performances against existing methodologies of forecasting volatility such as GARCH and found that the proposed hybrid models improve upon the forecasting accuracy of Crude Oil: West Texas Intermediate under various forecasting horizons and perform better than GARCH and GJR-GARCH, with GG–LSTM performing the best of the three proposed models at 7-, 14-, and 21-day-ahead forecasts in terms of heteroscedasticity-adjusted mean square error and heteroscedasticity-adjusted mean absolute error, with significance testing conducted through the model confidence set showing that GG–LSTM is a strong contender for forecasting crude oil volatility under different forecasting regimes and rolling-window schemes. The contribution of the paper is that it enhances the forecasting ability of crude oil futures volatility, which is essential for trading, hedging, and purposes of arbitrage, and that the proposed model dwells upon existing literature and enhances the forecasting accuracy of crude oil volatility by fusing a neural network model with multiple econometric models.     

The Performance,Asset Allocation,and Investment Style of International Equity Managers

This paper evaluates the performance of 114 international equity managers over the January 1988–December 1997 period. Performance tests are conducted using Sharpe (1966) and Jensen (1968) performance methodologies. The managers are divided into mutual fund (n=54) and separately managed fund (n=60) investment management categories. Each management category is further divided by foreign and world (global) investment objectives. Three major findings are reported. First, international equity managers, on average, were unable to outperform the MSCI World market proxy during the sample period. However, world managers did perform better than their foreign counterparts. Second, geographic asset allocation and equity style allocation decisions enhanced the performance of international managers during the sample period. Third, separately managed funds outperformed mutual funds during the period studied when mutual fund returns are measured net of management fees. The apparent managed performance advantage abates, however, when mutual fund returns are adjusted to include management fees. Thus, we find no significant difference in the performance of the management categories when returns are measured gross of fees.     

A multi-criteria approach to local tax planning

A city tax model based on the analytic hierarchy process is developed. This model allows city officials to explicitly take into account the existence of multiple decision criteria in selecting new tax options. Opinions from tax experts are used to relate tax plans to decision criteria. The paper explores the feasibility of applying commonly available decision tools to facilitate and improve decision making in local government.     

Board structure and role of monitoring committees

Regulators and researchers alike have focused significant attention on the structure of the corporate board. In general, the results of prior empirical studies suggest that larger boards are costly to firms because of communication and co-ordination problems. How firms use committees to mitigate these costs, however, has not received as much attention. Since boards delegate authority for specific tasks to monitoring committees with independent directors, we re-examine the impact of board structure on firm performance by specifically focusing on the number of monitoring committees. Using ROA and EVA, we find that board size is positively associated with firm performance when firms use more than three monitoring committees. We also find that the previously documented negative association between board size and Tobin's Q disappears when a firm uses more than three monitoring committees. Overall, the results suggest that firms use monitoring committees to mitigate the costs associated with larger boards.