Deprivation and Incidence of Urban Public Services: A Tale of Three Cities

We approach the problem of deprivation and incidence of urban public services by quantifying the extent of deprivation of different income groups in relation to both desired and minimum levels. Three types of deprivation are clearly established. First, deprivation in both Bombay and Calcutta is higher than that of Delhi. Second, there is a serious concern for primary health and education because it is established that the lack of these local services is the major source of deprivation among urban settlers. Finally, we report how well different income classes are served in these cities: the rich are worst-off in Calcutta and best-off in Bombay. Middle income and poor citizens are best-off and worst-off in Delhi and Bombay, respectively.     

A Survey of Governance Disclosures Among U.S. Firms

Recent years have featured a spate of regulatory action pertaining to the development and/or disclosure of corporate governance structures in response to financial scandals resulting in part from governance failures. During the same period, corporate governance activists and institutional investors increasingly have called for increased voluntary governance disclosure. Despite this attention, there have been relatively few comprehensive studies of governance disclosure practices and response to the regulation. In this study, we examine a sample of 50 U.S. firms and their public disclosure packages from 2004. We find a high degree of variability in the presentation and reporting format choices for many elements of the governance structure. This variability includes several items for which disclosure is mandated by regulators or legislative action. In particular, smaller firms offer fewer disclosures pertaining to independence, board selection procedures, and oversight of management (including whistleblowing procedures). There are also trends associated with board characteristics: boards that are less independent offer fewer disclosures of independence and management oversight matters. Moreover, large firms provide more disclosures of independence standards, board selection procedures, audit committee matters, management control systems, other committee matters, and whistleblowing procedures but do not appear to have a strictly superior information environment when compared to smaller firms. The findings raise questions about compliance with regulatory requirements and the degree to which conflicts of interest between managers and directors are being controlled. While there have been notable improvements in the information environment of governance disclosures, there remain structural issues that may possess negative ramifications for stakeholders.     

Estimation of the parameter of the inverse Gaussian distribution from generalised censored samples

In this paper, a new Type of censored sample referred as generalised censored sample is defined and is differentiated fromCohen's [1963] progressively censored type I and type II samples. The maximum likelihood estimate of the parameter of the inverse Gaussian distribution from generalised censored samples is obtained. An expression for the standard error of the estimate is given.     

Quality of appraisal practices in Indian PSUs: a case study

The main aim of the study is to assess the level of expectation and experience regarding the consideration of the skills relating to internal marketing in performance appraisal report while evaluating performance of human resources in Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) (AOD; Assam Oil Division), Digboi. This study also attempts to assess the level of expectation and experience regarding ideal ‘post-performance-appraisal-scenario’ in IOCL (AOD), Digboi. Furthermore, the study ventures to assess the level of overall satisfaction with performance appraisal system of the company as perceived by the employees, i.e. the internal customers. The study has looked into performance appraisal as a tool of human resource management through the lenses of internal marketing skills in the context of Central Public Sector Undertakings, which have very narrow base of internal Customers. This new approach has the potential to orient the Public Sector Undertakings to the market-driven economy.     

Relative inflation dynamics in the new EU member countries of Central and Eastern Europe

Following their EU accession, the new member countries from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) must achieve sustainable price stability as one of the pre-conditions for joining the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and adopting the euro. This article examines the distribution dynamics of inflation rates in ten new EU members from CEE relative to the EMU accession benchmark inflation over the period 1990–2009. In contrast to previous studies, we use nonparametric methods to test for convergence in inflation rates between CEE and the EMU benchmark as well as within the CEE sample. Over the entire sample period, we detect a general shift in the CEE inflation distribution toward the EMU benchmark along with intradistributional convergence. However, this process is not uniform. In the early years, it was equally likely for CEE inflation rates to move toward or away from the benchmark. The resulting multimodal distribution gave way to a unimodal distribution in the years leading up to the EU accession, accompanied by a marked shift toward the EMU benchmark. In more recent years, emergence of a bimodal distribution signaled the stratification of relative inflation in CEE into two convergence clubs, which has intensified since the start of the global economic crisis.     

A study of the structural integration of the marketing and PR functions in the C-suite

Recently, a number of firms have structurally integrated the distinct yet related functions of marketing and public relations (PR), under the leadership of a single corporate-, or C-level, executive. Such actions, as well as turf wars between the functions over social media ownership and related stakeholder management conflicts, have reignited the debate over whether marketing and PR should be separated or unified. By drawing on the pros and cons of integration, as suggested by prior conceptual research on integrated marketing communications, and using secondary data for a set of Fortune 500 firms, this study empirically tests this issue for multiple outcomes and contingencies. Results show that the integration of marketing and PR has positive benefits for firm reputation, an effect that is weakened as firm size increases, and positive effects for firm profitability in service-oriented firms.     

The impact of organizational pressures on environmental performance of firms

The role of various organizational pressures in influencing performance of firms has been an interesting research topic in a variety of fields and has received the attention of researchers working in the field of environmental strategy. Although there are previous studies that have looked at the influence of various pressures in influencing firms’ environmental strategies, our study provides a more holistic analysis considering a variety of such pressures in a single framework. We discuss a research study to analyze how pressures from internal and external stakeholders of a firm, economic pressures, environmental regulations, and pressures of environmental compliance have affected environmental performance of firms using data collected from manufacturing firms in the United Kingdom. We have found that internal stakeholders provide the greatest impact in shaping environmental performance of firms, closely followed by economic pressures, environmental regulations, and external stakeholders in that order. Fears of penalties due to environmental compliance have the least impact, although this pressure also has a positive and significant impact on environmental performance.     

How chilling are network externalities? The role of network structure

In an influential paper, Goldenberg, Libai, and Muller (2010) use an agent-based model to demonstrate that network externalities have a “chilling” effect on new product diffusion, i.e. they slow down new product adoption since many consumers wait before enough people have adopted. They perform their simulations using theoretical Moore lattices as the underlying social network of consumers. However, it has been demonstrated in other contexts that network structures can significantly affect the dynamics of new product diffusion, and hence it is worth investigating the same considerations for network externalities as well. I use the diffusion model of Goldenberg et al. (2010) to perform simulations on actual social networks to demonstrate that the chilling effect of network externalities is somewhat offset by increasing network size and average degree of the nodes, but accentuated by increased clustering in the network. My simulations also reveal that the diffusion model used by Goldenberg et al. (2010) does not have the chilling effect tautologically “baked” into it; rather network externalities do tend to slow down new product adoption most of the time, but not always.     

Trade,growth and wage inequality in Bangladesh

Abstract

Using model selection techniques based on out-of-sample predictive ability criterion in a Vector Autoregression (VAR) framework, this paper empirically examines the causal relations among growth, trade, and wage inequality in Bangladesh between 1971 and 2000. There is some evidence of bi-directional causality between growth and inequality and between trade and growth. That growth causes trade and that trade causes inequality are robust results. Furthermore, evidence strongly suggests that investment is important for trade, and the terms of trade between agricultural products and manufacturing products is an important causal determinant of both growth and trade.