International acquisitions and emerging market firms' performance—a structural contingency perspective

Entry modes have impact on firms' performance in international markets. Using an organizational structural contingency perspective, we assert that firms with mechanistic structure can enhance their performance in international markets if they choose acquisitions as an entry mode. Mechanistic structure limits organizations' learning capability, which can be managed through acquisitions but not through other entry modes such as joint ventures. For managing limitations associated with the poor knowledge absorption capability of mechanistically structured organizations, firms should not follow the standard integration procedures associated with acquisitions aiming to achieve economies of scale or scope. Rather, they should provide corporate parenting advantage to the newly acquired unit by (a) granting complete autonomy and (b) contributing required resources for future growth, thus treating the acquired business as a strategic business unit. Since mechanistic structures are more common in emerging markets, we explain our perspective using illustrative caselets from these markets.     

Bond rating agencies and their role in bank market discipline

This study examines whether changes in the ratings of bank debt have any information content. Bank holding companies are monitored both by bank regulators and by debt rating agencies, leading to the view that duplication of effort may render superfluous the monitoring service of rating agencies. However, our results show that downgrades of bank debt are associated with statistically significant wealth losses, irrespective of whether the rating change is across rating classes or within a rating class. Moreover, the results hold even when observations with potentially confounding events are removed from the sample. These results suggest that rating agencies provide valuable information to the capital market regarding the risk exposure of bank holding companies.     

Institutional Investor Ownership and Corporate Pension Transparency

We examine the association between institutional ownership and defined benefit (DB) pension decisions. We find that institutional ownership is negatively associated with pension underfunding, opportunistic increases in the expected rate of return assumption in the presence of underfunding, and significant ownership of the firm's own stock in the DB plan portfolio. Furthermore, these relations are stronger when institutional ownership is concentrated, when institutions are nontransient investors, or when institutions are relatively large. These results suggest that institutional investors are monitoring firm pension decisions, particularly those institutions with stronger monitoring incentives or resources.     

Individuals and Their Local Utility Stocks: Preference for the Familiar

We find individuals are four times more likely to purchase stocks of their local direct utility company as opposed to utility companies operating outside their state of residence. Our tests reveal that individuals do not possess superior or private information about their local utilities. Indeed, individual preference for their local utility stocks seems to be driven by preference for familiar assets, even in the presence of a desire for high dividend yields. In addition, affluence and sophistication do not reduce local bias.     

Quantifying the cyclically adjusted fiscal stance for India

Taking cue from recent debate in the literature, we attempt to disentangle cyclically adjusted fiscal balance (CAB) for India broadly using the methodology recommended by the IMF, an indigenous revenue elasticity for India and a range of potential output estimates. Our results indicate that after initial success in containing CAB, it increased considerably during the crisis period. Notwithstanding a positive output gap in the post-crisis period (2009–11) and subsequent increase in inflation, the CAB continued to be expansionary, with limited withdrawal of expansionary stance, albeit a reduction in fiscal impulse. This calls for further reforms and binding framework that can withstand business cycles.     

Availability,recency, and sophistication in the repurchasing behavior of retail investors

When determining a stock to buy, Strahilevitz et al. (2011) demonstrate that individual investors often repurchase a stock previously traded for a profit as a learning process. When evaluating a decision, people use the most available information that comes to mind. We posit that the most recently sold stocks are the most salient. Our analysis reveals that the presence of another more recently sold stock decreases a household’s propensity to repurchase a different stock by 23%. This recency effect dominates the impact of prior profitability on the repurchasing decision. The repurchase activity of investors appears to be sub-optimal, partially due to commission costs and under-diversification of portfolios, which is magnified for households repurchasing at higher frequencies. More sophisticated investors demonstrate less of this behavior.     

Benchmarking sustainable E-commerce enterprises based on evolving customer expectations amidst COVID-19 pandemic

The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has seriously impacted the performance of all types of businesses. It has given a tremendous structural boost to e-commerce enterprises by forcing customers to online shopping over visiting physical stores. Moreover, customer expectations of the digital and operational capabilities of e-commerce firms are also increasing globally. Thus, it has become crucial for an e-commerce enterprise to reassess and realign its business practices to meet evolving customer needs and remain sustainable. This paper presents a comprehensive performance evaluation framework for e-commerce enterprises based on evolving customer expectations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The framework comprises seven primary criteria, which are further divided into 25 sub-criteria, including two sustainability factors, namely, environmental sustainability and carbon emissions. The evaluation approach is then practically demonstrated by analyzing the case of three Indian e-commerce firms. The results are obtained using a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method, namely, Fuzzy VIKOR, to capture the fuzziness of the inherent decision-making problem. Further, numerical analysis is conducted to evaluate and rank various e-commerce enterprises based on customer expectations and satisfaction benchmarks. The findings explain the most important criteria and sub-criteria for e-commerce businesses to ensure customer expectations along with their economic and environmental sustainability.     

Of poisoners, tanners and the British Raj: redefining Chamar identity in colonial North India, 1850–90

This article explores colonial representations of the crime of cattle poisoning and uses it as a starting point to investigate questions related to the formation of Chamar identity. Starting from the 1850s, it looks at the process whereby the caste group was imbued with certain undesirable traits of character. Simultaneously, it also explores the larger trend towards fixing the caste with certain occupational traits, so that it began to be identified completely with leather work by late nineteenth century. The role of new specialisms such as ethnography, toxicology and medical jurisprudence in the formation of new definitions about Chamars is also highlighted. The overall aim of the article is to reveal the complexities involved in the formation of colonial discourse about caste and caste groups.