Tourism-based heritage conservation in Murshidabad: an appraisal

The article appraises the outcome of promoting tourism as a strategy for heritage conservation in the case of Murshidabad, an archetypal historic town in decline in India. A relational maturity-based framework has been used to examine the complementarities and conflicts between tourism and heritage conservation in the town. The prevailing nature of tourism conservation relationship in Murshidabad upholds the criticality characteristically observed in developing countries, where governments focus primarily on the revenue generating potential of built-heritage centric tourism ignoring the conservation attention necessary to retain authenticity and meaningful existence of historic structures. The overarching issues emerging from the current level of relational maturity in Murshidabad are identified with suggestions for possible policy implications of the study.     

Qualitative Input–Output Analysis of the Indian Economic Structure

Qualitative input–output (IO) analysis can be considered mostly in terms of a graph-theoretic formulation, which involves the construction and use of an adjacency matrix, derived from a binary transformation of the IO coefficient matrix. Classical attempts at qualitative IO analysis have derived the structure from the direct IO coefficient table. In more recent attempts, greater sophistication has been achieved by incorporating a degree of quantification into the qualitative analysis. Also, the concept of important coefficients (IC) has been used for the construction of the adjacency matrix. The present study is carried out along these lines for the Indian economy.     

Influence of strategies and heuristics on farmers' response to change under uncertainty

Hierarchical Decision Models of woolproducers' decisions provide unique insights into the impact of major price changes. Producers' lagged response in some contexts appear to be due to the ambiguous decision environment they face, their strategic goals and responses to that environment apart from lags caused by factors such as attitude to risk, expectations adjustment, adjustment costs and learning costs. Much of the response to major price changes comes from strategic decisions to change enterprises rather than marginal changes to existing enterprises. In ambiguous environments, methods may need to be found that incorporate simplifying behavioural rules and strategies.     

Stock of downstream complementary assets as a catalyst for product innovation during technological change in the U.S. machine tool industry

Research summary : We investigate the effect of incumbents' stock of downstream complementary assets on their product innovation during a disruptive technological change. We theorize that a firm's stock of downstream complementary assets, by providing critical information about shifting demand conditions, will play a catalytic role in firm adaptation during such a change. Using the advent of disruptive computer numerical control machine tools in the U.S. machine tool industry during the 1970s and 1980s as the context, we find that firms with greater stocks of downstream complementary assets are likely to be product innovation leaders during such a change. Managerial summary : Disruptive changes are challenging firms across industries. We concentrate on the U.S. machine tool industry during the 1970s and 1980s when Japanese manufacturers with disruptive computer numerical control systems challenged the U.S. manufacturers. We find that, under the threat of disruption, the greater the stock of downstream complementary assets a U.S. machine tool manufacturer has, the more likely it is to be the product innovation leader with the disruptive technology. Our findings provide novel insights for managers in companies that face disruptive changes and can help them avoid the consequences of such changes as predicted by prior research. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Which Governance Mechanisms Promote Efficiency in Reaching Poor Clients? Evidence from Rated Microfinance Institutions

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of several governance mechanisms on microfinance institutions' (MFI) performance. We first define performance as efficiency in reaching many poor clients. Following the literature on efficiency in banks, we estimate a stochastic cost frontier and measure output by the number of clients. Therefore, we capture the cost minimisation goal and the goal of serving many poor clients, both of which are pursued by MFIs. We next explore the impact of measurable governance mechanisms on the individual efficiency coefficients. The results show that efficiency increases with a board size of up to nine members and decreases after that. MFIs in which the CEO chairs the board and those with a larger proportion of insiders are less efficient. The evidence also suggests that donors' presence on the board is not beneficial. We do not find consistent evidence for the effect of competition, and we find weak evidence that MFIs in countries with mature regulatory environments reach fewer clients, while MFIs regulated by an independent banking authority are more efficient.     

Testing for rational bubbles in the presence of structural breaks: Evidence from nonstationary panels

This paper presents new results on the rational bubbles hypothesis for a panel of 18 OECD countries using the model developed by Campbell (2000). We provide an analysis of international data that exploits increased power deriving from the panel unit root and cointegration methodology, together with the flexibility of allowing explicitly for multiple endogenous structural breaks in the individual series. Differently from the time series methodology, the panel data approach allows for a global analysis of the financial crashes that are related to rational bubbles. We find strong evidence in favor of bubbles phenomena.     

Central Bank Intervention in USD/INR Market: Estimating Its Reaction Function and Impact on Volatility

Econometric evidence on why central banks intervene in the foreign exchange market and the impact of such intervention has remained inconclusive. We contribute to the literature with evidence from India, a managed float regime that sees consistent monitoring and intervention by Reserve Bank of India, India’s central bank. Estimation of the central bank reaction function shows that increased volatility in the foreign exchange market and misalignment from targeted rates are important objectives behind intervention. The paper further uses the GARCH framework to study how intervention influences exchange rate volatility. We find that intervention in the spot market increases volatility while that in the forward market reduces volatility.     

Trust in financial services: Retrospect and prospect

Fostering and maintaining high levels of trust in the financial services sector is seen as crucial because of the characteristics of many financial service and in order to promote consumer engagement in the sector. In this article, we report evidence from a body of work and other commentary to provide an insight into trends in consumer trust in the sector as a whole, in comparison with other organisations and how different types of financial services provider have performed relative to each other. We show that the financial services sector as a whole is trusted more than some comparator institutions, and that aggregate levels of trust in the sector have fluctuated a relatively small amount subsequent to the financial crisis. However, important differences between provider types are apparent and these differences have become more profound in the recent past. We provide suggestions as to how trust in the sector may be improved and provider an analysis of current initiatives to improve trust levels in the sector in general and in banking in particular.