A general equilibrium approach to wage bargaining and employment

This paper attempts to capture the effects of cyclical fluctuations in business activity on factor prices and employment levels in a two-sector model with wage bargaining.     

East European aid to India

The aid-relationship is part of a wider economic relationship between India and the East European countries, in a far more integrated sense than is the case with some of India's other donors. The group has been a significant though not a dominant source of aid to India, the USSR being the most important member of the group. Easy generalizations about the terms of East European aid, in comparison to aid from other sources, are not possible. The same is true for India's experience in the actual utilization of aid from various sources. The main usefulness of the East European countries as a source of aid has lain in their willingness to give aid for particular public-sector projects and in improving India's bargaining powers vis-à-vis other donors.     

On non-negative variance-estimation

Summary Pursuing the works ofRao [1972, 1977] andChaudhuri [1976] the problem of non-negative estimation of the variance of the ratio-estimator based on Sen-Midzuno[Sen], [Midzuno] scheme of sampling is studied further. With this problem it is noted that (1) some of the recently published [videRao, 1972, 1977;Chaudhuri] non-negativity conditions can never be realised and (2) some other conditions can hold only in trivial circumstances. Similar results are observed in connection with other strategies of sampling finite population parameters as well.     

Some results concerningHorvitz-Thompson's T 1-class of estimators

Summary The question of availability of a unique best estimator inHorvitz-Thompson's T ₁-class of estimators is dealt with in general and a simple sampling scheme yielding such an estimator is found out; the efficiency of the same is studied and a method of improving on it is also discussed.     

School Attainment, Completion, and Economic Development: A Cross-Country Analysis

The primary aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between school attainment, school completion, and economic development. In doing so it also examines the effect of other macroeconomic variables on school attainment and completion. Estimation is conducted using a panel dataset of 138 countries. Our results show that income levels, government expenditure on education, and political instability all have significant effects on school completion and attainment. In addition these variables have different effects on male and female schooling. Our results have important policy implications and in particular allow policymakers to identify different instruments to target the problem of non‐completion of schooling.     

Multi-item EOQ model while demand is sales price and price break sensitive

In this paper, the authors study a multi-item deterministic EOQ (economic order quantity) model for a vendor when the demand rate of the essential commodities decreases quadratically with increasing sales price and increase exponentially with increasing level of price breaks. A price discount is offered to the customers when the revenue of the vendor crosses the level of price break. The main aim of the present article is to find out the optimal order quantities, optimal selling prices and optimal level of price break in order to maximize the average profit of the whole products. Numerical examples are also illustrated to test of our proposed model.     

Optimal replenishment order for uncertain demand in three layer supply chain

The authors study the well-known order quantity model in a three-player context, using a framework of newsboy problem. An expected average cost function of the chain by trading off inventory cost and shortage costs is formulated which is minimized to obtain optimal order sizes of the supplier, manufacturer and retailer. Our theoretical analysis of both cases; (i) when demand per unit time of each member of the chain is uncertain, (ii) when uncertain demand is distributed uniformly over finite time horizon; suggests the determining of optimal order sizes of the members so that the expected average channel cost is minimum. Numerical examples for different distributions are illustrated to justify our model.     

Economic Reforms and Gender-Based Wage Inequality in the Presence of Factor Market Distortions

A simple three-sector general equilibrium model has been developed with both male and female labour and factor market distortions. The effects of different liberalized economic policies have been examined on the gender-based wage inequality. The analysis finds that credit market reform and tariff reform produce favourable effects on the wage inequality while the liberalized investment policy becomes counterproductive. The basic model has been extended to treat domestic capital differently from foreign capital. In the extended model, all of the above results hold. Additionally, it has been found that domestic capital formation is likely to produce a favourable impact on the gender wage inequality. These results have important policy implications for a small open developing economy.

     

I (do not) consume; therefore,I am: Investigating materialism and voluntary simplicity through a moderated mediation model

With the burgeoning of consumer culture and materialism on a global scale, a counter-culture movement, namely, voluntary simplicity, is slowly gaining currency. Extant research reveals a degree of disparateness in the relationship between materialism and voluntary simplicity. Drawing on the value-basis theory and anti-consumption research, the current study attempts at an unorthodox study of the fledgling culture of anti-consumption in urban India. The paper empirically examines the relationship between materialism and voluntary simplicity in India. This research, through an experimental study followed by a sample survey, conducted among urban Indian consumers, examines how satisfaction with life, self-efficacy, and individualism interact with materialistic values to eventually influence voluntary simplicity attitudes. In Study 1 (N = 74 working professionals), we experimentally triggered materialistic aspirations and evaluated their effects on voluntary simplicity in comparison to a control condition. In Study 2 (N = 315), individuals self-rated their materialistic values, satisfaction with life, self-efficacy, cultural orientation, and voluntary simplicity attitude. Our study, contrary to the suggestions in the existing literature, demonstrates that materialists espouse voluntary simplicity attitudes when environmental degradation around them directly impacts their health, wealth, and well-being. In addition to the positive direct effect, satisfaction with life and self-efficacy serially mediate the relationship between materialism and voluntary simplicity, providing a welcome divergence from dark-sided conceptualizations of materialism. Our results help global marketers, and public policymakers better understand the interaction between materialistic values and sustainable consumption attitudes, in the developing country perspective.     

Model assisted survey sampling strategy in two phases

Postulating a super-population regression model connecting a size variable, a cheaply measurable variable and an expensively observable variable of interest, an asymptotically optimal double sampling strategy to estimate the survey population total of the third variable is specified. To render it practicable, unknown model-parameters in the optimal estimator are replaced by appropriate statistics. The resulting generalized regression estimator is then shown to have a model-cum-asymptotic design based expected square error equal to that of the asymptotically optimum estimator itself. An estimator for design variance of the estimator is also proposed.