Prediction of the Indian summer monsoon using a stacked autoencoder and ensemble regression model

The study of climatic variables that govern the Indian summer monsoon has been widely explored. In this work, we use a non-linear deep learning-based feature reduction scheme for the discovery of skilful predictors for monsoon rainfall with climatic variables from various regions of the globe. We use a stacked autoencoder network along with two advanced machine learning techniques to forecast the Indian summer monsoon. We show that the predictors such as the sea surface temperature and zonal wind can predict the Indian summer monsoon one month ahead, whereas the sea level pressure can predict ten months before the season. Further, we also show that the predictors derived from a combination of climatic variables can outperform the predictors derived from an individual variable. The stacked autoencoder model with combined predictors of sea surface temperature and sea level pressure can predict the monsoon (June-September) two months ahead with a 2.8% error. The accuracy of the identified predictors is found to be superior to the state-of-the-art predictions of the Indian monsoon.     

Effects of Ownership Structure on Capital Structure of Indian Listed Firms: Role of Business Groups vis-à-vis Stand-Alone Firms

The objective of this study was to explore the relationship between promoter ownership and capital structure of firms’ using a sample of Indian publicly listed firms for the period from 2006 to 2013. We find that the relationship between promoter ownership and leverage is inversely U-shaped in group-affiliated firms, whereas in stand-alone firms there is a U-shaped relationship. We argue that a substantial presence of family owners and the selection of managers from within the family play some role for such relationship in group-affiliated firms. On the other hand, the argument for observed relationship in stand-alone firms follows from alignment hypothesis, entrenchment hypothesis, managerial risk aversion hypothesis, and active monitoring hypothesis.     

Measuring the Impact of Socio-Economic Factors on School Efficiency in Australia

This paper examines the productive efficiency of government schools in New South Wales (NSW) in Australia. The study uses a technical inefficiency effects model applied to a unique three-year panel dataset containing 1235 primary and 371 secondary schools in NSW. A stochastic frontier production function and an inefficiency effects function that control for school socioeconomic and environmental factors are estimated. The dataset contains information on various school inputs, school expenditures by major functional area, parental socioeconomic characteristics, student characteristics, and standardized test scores. We examine the degree to which school and non-school educational inputs influence student achievement scores and find that, overall, primary schools are 88.6% and secondary schools 96.4% efficient. The index describing community socio-educational advantage has the most significant influence on students’ achievement scores.     

Understanding Firms’ Approaches to Voluntary Certification: Evidence from Multiple Case Studies in FSC Certification

Voluntary certifications, such as Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) in the forestry sector, are used to manage sustainable and socially responsible practices in firms. Even though the certifications are based on standards, it has been reported that adopting firms are nothing but a homogeneous cohort of adopters and in fact differ in their approaches to the certification. In this paper, we conceptualize firms’ approach to certification and link the approaches to various aspects of certification. Using an inductive approach and deriving our data from multiple case studies from forestry FSC certification, we argue that firms’ approach to certification is explained by their development of absorptive capacity, alignment of their organizational routines and their engagement in negotiations with FSC. We also argue that these approaches affect firm’s benefits from certification, their level of adherence to the requirements of the certification and their likelihood to withdraw from the certification. We discuss our findings in view of the literature on absorptive capacity, institutional literature and the literature on collective action and also discuss the implications of the study to voluntary certification literature in general.     

Place Matters: (Dis)embeddedness and Child Labourers’ Experiences of Depersonalized Bullying in Indian Bt Cottonseed Global Production Networks

Journal of Business Ethics - Engaging Polanyi’s embeddedness–disembeddedness framework, this study explored the work experiences of Bhil children employed in Indian Bt cottonseed GPNs....     

Do Neighbours Influence Value‐Added‐Tax Introduction? A Spatial Duration Analysis

The spatial survival models typically impose frailties, which characterize unobserved heterogeneity, to be spatially correlated. However, the spatial effect may not only exist in the unobserved errors, but it can also be present in the baseline hazards and the dependent variables. A new spatial survival model with these three possible spatial correlation structures is explored and used to investigate the implementation of value‐added tax (VAT) in 99 countries over the period 1970–2009. Estimation is performed by a Bayesian approach through the Markov chain Monte Carlo method. The estimation results suggest the presence of a significant spatial correlation among the VAT introductions of neighbouring countries.     

THE IMPACT OF FOOD PRICE SHOCK ON HETEROGENEOUS CREDIT CONSTRAINED FIRMS

ABSTRACT 1 : The paper analyzes how rising food and energy prices affect heterogeneous firm access to inputs and production under credit market imperfections. We estimate a firm credit constraint equation using a unique firm level panel data and find that, on average, small individual firms (IF) are more credit constrained than large corporate firms (CF). Using the estimated parameters, we simulate the effect of the recent food price shock on the world markets. Our results suggest that in the presence of credit market imperfections, the less credit constrained CF benefit relatively more from food price increase than IF, as they are able to expand their production more flexibly. These findings have important policy implications for countries with significant market imperfections. In the case of the food price shock, not only consumers but also producers, which on average are more credit constrained than producers in developed countries, may lose their market shares and hence their income in the long run.     

The pricing of leverage products: An empirical investigation of the German market for ‘long’ and ‘short’ stock index certificates

This paper describes the first thorough empirical analysis of the pricing of leverage products in the German retail market. These mainly exchange-traded products with an impressive trading volume are frequently advertised as long and short futures contracts, although they are theoretically equivalent to one-sided barrier options. Issuers’ daily quotes for stock index products are compared to (i) theoretical values derived from the prices of Eurex options and to (ii) boundaries obtained from semi-static superhedging strategies. For the vast majority of products, bid and ask quotes significantly exceed both theoretical values and upper hedging boundaries, thus providing almost risk-free profits for the issuers.     

Agency Costs in Dynamic Economic Models

We consider an overlapping generations economy where capital is produced from bank loans under stochastic constant returns to scale, and subject to idiosyncratic shocks whose realisations are costly to verify. Our formulation differs from earlier work in permitting investment projects to be infinitely divisible and private agency costs to be convex. If there are external economies to financial intermediation, then deviations from steady-state output are negatively correlated with the spread between loan and deposit rates. Moreover, the capital stock correspondence is set-valued, a result consistent with poverty traps, growth cycles, and hump-shaped impulse response functions.