Order Flows,Investor Sentiments and Feedback Trade in Index Futures Market

This paper examines the presence of feedback trading, and investor sentiment drove feedback trading by traders in the Nifty 50 index futures contract in India. The results of the study using high-frequency data sampled at 10 min interval using VAR and contemporaneous VAR model as applied to market microstructure settings reveals negative evidence of feedback trade and investor sentiment-driven feedback trade in Nifty 50 futures contract. Further, consistency with noise trading hypothesis, order flows in Nifty 50 futures contract is less informative when traders are overly optimistic.

     

Religion and identity in India’s heritage tourism

The growing worth of heritage in the renegotiation and dissemination of identities has intensified conflicts over whose voice dominates heritage tourism representations. Therefore, this study compares the way India’s heritage is represented by the Indian government, by the domestic tourism trade media and by the popular tourism media. The findings reveal that India is consistently represented as an ethnically diverse nation in which Hinduism preceded and prevailed over all other ethnicities/religions; a portrayal that consolidates the state’s secular nationalist narrative. Furthermore, the trade and popular media emphasize nostalgic experiences of a sanitized colonial history while the government emphasizes accounts of resistance against colonial powers and of suffering due to Muslim atrocities.     

System of crop intensification for more productive,resource-conserving,climate-resilient,and sustainable agriculture: experience with diverse crops in varying agroecologies

With continually increasing demand for food accompanied by the constraints of climate change and the availability and quality of soil and water, the world’s farmers are challenged to produce more food per hectare with less water, and with fewer agrochemical inputs if possible. The ideas and methods of the system of rice intensification which is improving irrigated rice production are now being extended/adapted to many other crops: wheat, maize, finger millet, sugarcane, tef, mustard, legumes, vegetables, and even spices. Promoting better root growth and enhancing the soil’s fertility with organic materials are being found effective means for raising the yields of many crop plants with less water, less fertilizer, reduced seeds, fewer agrochemicals, and greater climate resilience. In this article, we review what is becoming known about various farmer-centred innovations for agroecological crop management that can contribute to agricultural sustainability. These changes represent the emerging system of crop intensification, which is being increasingly applied in Asian, African, and Latin American countries. More research will be needed to verify the efficacy and impact of these innovations and to clarify their conditions and limits. But as no negative effects for human or environmental health have been identified, making these agronomic options more widely known should prompt more investigation and, to the extent justified by results, utilization of these methodologies.     

Resource saving and productivity enhancing impacts of crop management innovation packages in Ethiopia

Crop management innovations are often not discrete fixed stand‐alone options—and their adoption may imply various combinations and adaptations. This potentially confounds their impact assessment. This article assesses the resource saving and productivity enhancing impacts of a crop management package revolving around minimum tillage in maize‐based farming systems in northwest Ethiopia. An endogenous switching regression model was applied to plot‐ and household‐level survey data collected from 290 rural households operating 590 maize plots during the 2012 production year. Controlling for variations in plot and household characteristics, the average effect of minimum tillage package (minimum tillage package) on maize productivity is 0.44 t/ha. Compared to conventional practice (CP), adoption of the MTP decreased the average male and female labor use in maize production by 14.4 and 8.2 person‐days per ha, respectively. Similarly, MTP adoption decreased draft power use for land preparation by 13.2 pair of oxen‐days per ha. Compared to CP, in general, there is a considerable short‐run maize productivity gain and reduction in labor and draft power use under MTP.     

Financing the sustainable management of Rwanda's protected areas

Rwanda's Nyungwe National Park is a biodiversity hotspot with the most endemic species in the ecoregion and the highest number of threatened species internationally. Nyungwe supplies critical ecosystem services to the Rwandan population including water provisioning and tourism services. Tourism in the Park has strong potential for financing enhanced visitor experiences and the sustainable management of the Park. This paper explores quantitatively the economic impacts of adjustment in Park visitation fees and tourism demand as a source of revenues to improve Park tourism opportunities and ongoing operations and maintenance. The methods developed in this paper are novel in integrating the results of stated preference techniques with a regional computable general equilibrium modelling approach to capture multisectoral, direct, indirect and induced impacts. Such methods have strong potential for assessing revenue generation alternatives in other contexts where park managers are faced with the need to generate additional revenue for sustainable park management while facing diminishing budget allocations. Results of this analysis demonstrate that adjustment of Park fees has a relatively small impact on the regional economy and well-being when compared with a strategy aimed at generating increased tourism demand through investment in improving the visitor experience at Nyungwe National Park.     

Impatience implication of weakly Paretian orders: Existence and genericity

We study order theoretic and topological implications for impatience of weakly Paretian, representable orders on infinite utility streams. As a departure from the traditional literature, we do not make any continuity assumptions in proving the existence of impatient points. Impatience is robust in the sense that there are uncountably many impatient points. A general statement about genericity of impatience cannot be made for representable, weakly Paretian orders. This is shown by means of an example. If we assume a stronger sensitivity condition, then genericity obtains.     

A study of biotechnology start-ups undergoing leadership change: Antecedents of change and endogenous performance consequences

One of the most important decisions that a new biotechnology firm faces is whether to replace its founding CEO, who often has been involved with the invention of the firm's core technology, with a more professional manager, who has broader commercialization skills to help the firm to grow into a viable business. In this paper, we argue that leadership change away from the founding CEO is influenced strongly by the interests of key stakeholders and that the endogeneity inherent in the change (or non-change) influences firm performance. As the context surrounding decision-making changes from pre-patent to post-IPO, key stakeholders often may not view what is best for the firm and best for self-interest in the same way. Using data on change in leadership at 135 U.S. biotechnology equipment firms, we find evidence that the context in which decisions are being made influences which of the various competing interests will take precedence. The results further confirm the importance of controlling for endogeneity in decision-making when examining firm performance.     

Forced Versus Voluntary Dividend Reduction: An Agency Cost Explanation

We examine whether the agency cost arising from shareholder‐bondholder conflict is an important determinant of the timing of dividend reduction decisions. Firms forced to reduce dividends owing to bond covenant violations experience lower earnings, more frequent losses, and greater earnings declines around the dividend reduction year than do firms that voluntarily reduce dividends. Relative to voluntary‐reduction firms, forced‐reduction firms have higher debt‐to‐equity ratios and managerial holdings. These findings coupled with the increased dividend payout ratios and lower announcement period returns suggest that financially distressed firms that anticipate poor performance have greater incentives to delay reducing dividends to avoid a wealth transfer to bondholders.     

Tests of Income Pooling on Household Budget Data: The Australian Evidence

The unitary household model implies pooling of all individual incomes. This study distinguishes between various types of income pooling and tests them on Australian household income/expenditure data. The tests recognise the endogeneity of both earned and unearned income and are performed using a 3 SLS estimation procedure that allows feedback between the various equations. The results support income pooling for some items, though not for others. Moreover, income pooling across gender seems much less likely for old people than for the younger individuals. The study, also, provides evidence on the interaction between the various types of income.