bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
International Trade: New Dimention for Asia in Changing Scenario
Authors: Dongre Anil P.
Published: March 2013

International trade flows are penetrating deeper into the working of developing economy, because developing countries particularly Asian nation are fastest growing market for the product of multinational corporations. This causes overall changes in productivity growth, income distribution and employment pattern in general. Trade in goods and service has grown twice as for global GDP in the 1990's and the share attributes to developing countries has climbed from 23 to 29 percent only. As Asia concerned the total Export of Merchandise & Commercial services in 2005 was 2773 Billion dollars & 543 Billion dollars & total Import of it was 2599 Billion dollars & 595 Billion dollars. This indicates the share of Asia in world export & import of merchandise was 27.3% & 24.7% and that of commercial services was 22.4% & 25.2%. This clearly indicates that compositional change does not occur predominantly for the last ten years, which offer new opportunity for growth to the Asian economies.
Whither WTO: Future of Doha Round
Authors: Pankaj Prabhat K.
Published: March 2013

Crisis followed by another crisis, the much proclaimed Doha Round negotiations of the World Trade Organization (WTO) seems to have reached a dead-end. Even the most optimistic speculation suggests that resumption of dialogue on the suspended Doha round in the immediate future is not visible round the corner. Some analysts believe that the suspension of the Doha Round last July amounted to loss of a major opportunity to integrate more vulnerable economies into international trade. The clash occurred over the modalities to cut subsidies and tariffs in agriculture, the manner to proceed on non-agricultural market access (NAMA) and a fight over the ‘flexibilities’ to be provided to developing countries. Critiques maintain that the Doha round failed mainly because US and EU insisted on their unreasonable demand and adopted an adamant posture. The polarization in WTO became deeper and more concrete. The present review takes a stock of the situation by tracing the path of WTO's checkered journey till the recently held Geneva Mini-Ministerial.
S & P CNX Nifty Futures at NSE, India: An Empirical Analysis
Authors: Barik Prasanna Kumar , Supriya M.V.
Published: March 2013

The National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. has recently introduced derivative trading. Yet, we can see that there is a fairly good response from market participants to derivative trading. This study attempts to understand the functional relationships between the trading value and the trading price of Nifty Futures. It also attempts to understand this relationship in different economic situations.
Emergency Communications during Natural Disasters: Infrastructure and Technology
Authors: Rajatheva Nandana , Gamage Dinusha , Ahmed Kazi , Saengudomlert Poompat
Published: March 2013

The recent earthquakes, tsunami events raised the necessity for having appropriate disaster warning and recovery systems. There are on-going researches in the area of mobile networks which can be directly applicable to sensor networks. In this paper, we present how the disaster warning systems can be enhanced by using these smart sensor networks. Moreover, emergency communications can use ad-hoc network architecture. In the paper, we present how emergency communications can utilize the surviving network infrastructure for transmission of data such as Audio/video conference, access to Geographic Information System (GIS) etc.
Service Quality in Banking with Special Reference to ICICI Bank Ltd., Tiruchirappalli District
Authors: Amudha R. , Banu C. Vijaya
Published: March 2013

As per the Economic association of Indonesia and India, India has been one of the fastest growing economies in the world since the early 90s and India is fourth largest economy of the world after US in terms of purchasing power parity. This is because of the important role played by the financial sector comprising a large number of well managed banking services both in public and private sectors. India's second largest bank is the ICICI Bank offering a wide range of financial services to its customers through its delivery channels. To attain this sustainable competitive advantage, service industries face a unique challenge of meeting the needs of the customers regularly and continuously. Though mechanized form of activity has its own impact on service delivery performance, many service industries still remain to be manual because there exits no equivalent substitute for personal interaction between the employees of service industry and customers. The optimum mix of technology and people in the service delivery process decides the competitive advantage of an organization. Customer satisfaction is taken as a yardstick for measuring the quality of service and providing excellent customer service decides the effectiveness of service delivery process. Only through excellent customer service, an organization can consistently exceed customer expectations. In order to achieve customer satisfaction, every service organization must understand and improve service delivery process and implement valid and reliable service performance measures to measure the same. To assess the degree of customer satisfaction, a SERVQUAL instrument is administered to study the quality of service and the gaps were identified in the services offered by ICICI Bank, Tiruchirapalli District in all five dimensions of service quality, the overall weighted SERVQUAL score being −1.92. The ICICI Bank Ltd. has to take steps to close the gaps by establishing a service quality information system.
Asset Quality Based Ranking of Indian Commercial Banks – A Non-Parametric Approach
Authors: Sinha Ram Pratap
Published: March 2013

The present paper tries to make an asset quality based ranking of select (28) Indian commercial banks (20 public sector and eight private sector commercial banks) for the five year period 2000–01 to 2005–06 using Data Envelopment Analysis – a non parametric tool. The paper also compares the observed banks in terms of total factor productivity growth for the aforementioned period. The results obtained from the exercise indicate improvement in mean technical efficiency scores in 2004–05 relative to the previous four years. However, mean technical efficiency showed a declined in the next year. The observed private sector banks exhibited higher mean technical efficiency relative to the observed public sector banks for 2000–01 to 2003–04 (and 2005–06) while the reverse is true for 2004–05. The public sector banks, however, exhibit higher mean scale efficiency relative to the observed private sector banks. In so far as total factor productivity growth is concerned, the observed public sector commercial banks exhibited relatively higher Malmquist TFP growth than the observed private sector banks. However, the commercial banks, across ownership groups, exhibited negative mean total factor productivity growth. The negative growth (in real terms) may be the result of emphasis laid on off balance sheet activities on the part of the commercial banks
Defining Relationship Marketing: A review of Research
Authors: Madhavaiah C. , Rao S. Durga
Published: March 2013

The term “relationship marketing” has become a popular concept among the practitioners of marketing as well as academics during the last several years. It is very beneficial to firms because it can foster customer loyalty and re-patronage behaviour. Apart from its growing popularity among academia and practitioners, still there exists no consensus on the basic “constructs” of relationship marketing. Different authors have different opinions about what should and what should not be at the core of what constitutes “relationship marketing”. In view of this, an attempt is made in this paper to collect and analyse 36 definitions of relationship marketing from different sources of previous literature. Content analysis methodology has been used to identify the underlying “constructs” in each of the 36 definitions. The results suggest that there are seven RM “constructs” which constitute the major conceptualisations of relationship marketing. Out of 36 definitions of relationship marketing, only one definition is judged as being more comprehensive and generally acceptable and a new definition for relationship marketing is presented as an inducement to further research and discussion.
Work Values Scale: A Confirmatory Factor Analytic Study
Authors: Singh Shailendra , Bhattacharya Abhijit
Published: March 2013

This paper attempts to address two issues: describe the difference between Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and to examine whether the factor structure of ‘Work values Scale’ developed by Blood (1969) on U.S. sample holds valid in India. The participants in the study were equitably drawn: 250 junior and middle level managers from seven private and three public sector work organizations of North India. Their age ranged from 28 to 57 years. These executives belonged to wide range of functional areas, including accounts, engineering, personnel, production, quality control, R & D and sales. An attempt was made to represent most of the departments, as far as practicable. The average job experience of the respondents was 11.13 years and their educational qualification was a University or College Graduation or equivalent professional training. The most striking difference between EFA and CFA, is of investigators’ theory. In EFA, the investigator may not have any theoretical hypothesis in mind and may examine, common structure underlying the data. On the other hand, in CFA, investigators have prior information and theoretical basis of hypothesis regarding structure of the data and seek to confirm or reject the hypothesized structure. Based on Blood (1969), we proposed that work values scale will have two factors: Protestant Work Value and Non-Protestant Work Value. Data confirmed two-factor structure solution. Thus, the study suggests that there is a cross-cultural similarity among US and Indian managers on work values scale.
TGS Sensors in Electronic Nose for Multimedia Applications: A Practical Approach
Authors: Imam Syed A , Khan M R
Published: March 2013

Multimedia systems are widely used in consumer electronics environments today, where humans can work and communicate through multi-sensory interfaces. Unfortunately smell detection and generation systems are not part of today's multimedia systems. In this paper, we propose an Electronic Nose based on TGS-822 sensors that can be used in a multimedia environment. TGS-822 sensor based electronic nose can detect a large number of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) that have some smell and will have a significantly lower cost compared to the other detection systems. The results and the calibration graph obtained for three VOCs (i.e. ethanol, acetone and benzene) with varying concentration shows that TGS 822 sensor has the potential to become a reliable instrument and can be used in an electronic nose. Therefore, the accuracy and linearity of the obtained characteristics with higher sensitivity of the proposed electronic nose based on TGS-822 sensor for the detection and determination of volatile organic compounds defines its effectiveness in a multimedia environment.
E-Learning: A Tool for Education in Rural India
Authors: Kumar Abhiyendra
Published: March 2013

The population of India counts to 1.0270 billion according to the 2001 census. 70% of this population is habited in villages or rural areas. Rural Indian population is not as fortune as the urban population in terms of access to quality education system (technical education) and information & communication technology infrastructure of cities. The Information Technology (IT) Giant India needs to take its development programs of education, health, technology, agriculture to the masses to eliminate disparities, specifically the digital divide. India has an excellent education system of more than 380 universities and 1265 engineering colleges [4] providing IT education in the country. Despite this the availability of trained manpower is in short supply as far as IT manpower is concerned. As projected in many reports India could face a shortage of 0.5 million skilled IT manpower by 2009. These statistics are indicative of the fact that there is a need of other alternatives to reduce the digital divide (Rural V/s Urban) in the country and also to fill the gap of shortage of IT trained manpower. In such a scenario e-Learning could play a vital role since its enabler, IT infrastructure is developing in India at a very fast pace as it is evident with the development of Business Process Outsourcing industry and number of telephone users in the country. The President of India in his address (4th August, 2004) to the children of the nation said “education is the catalyst of change” and ‘Information Technology is the major driving force and change agent”. To achieve the objective of providing education to all children, he announced the project “EDUSAT”, which would install 150,000 ground terminals in the country. In addition new initiative of e-Government policies of the government are encouraging the usage of information technology in all sectors of the economy including education. In the nutshell, India has a conducive environment where e-Learning could develop in future to solve many problems of education especially in rural India. Keeping this in background, author presented in this paper, various facets of e-Learning in India, present status of e-Learning activities, major organizations & their technologies for creating e-Learning information systems, regulatory framework, government initiations, impact of e-Learning technologies on the education system. In addition the paper includes a framework of e-Learning for rural India and a business case of implementation of e-learning “knowledge hubs” in Aligarh district of Uttar Pradesh.
Determinants of Transformational Leadership and Organizational Citizenship Behavior
Authors: Krishnan Venkat R. , Arora Pooja
Published: March 2013

Using a sample of 93 superior-subordinate dyads from various organizations in India, this study looked at the relationships between leader's organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), transformational leadership, and follower's OCB. It also looked at leader's public self-consciousness and self-monitoring as antecedents to leader OCB, and leader's social skills and even-temperedness as antecedents to follower OCB. Results show that public self-consciousness is positively related to leader OCB, leader OCB is positively related to transformational leadership, and transformational leadership, social skills, and even-temperedness are positively related to follower OCB.
A Simulation-Based Approach to Software Project Risk Management
Authors: Singh Vikram
Published: March 2013

For most software development environments, software aids/automated tools for managing risk factors in software development projects are not available with a generic label. However, a generic class of computer-based automated tools, called ROI (risk on investment) analysis tools is available, yet, these tools lack features specific to software project risk management. As a matter of fact these tools have been developed with multi-person multi-activity engineering projects as target applications in mind. This paper describes a simulation based software project risk management tool which helps manager to identify high risk areas of software process and software product and plan, organize and manage the software development project in a judicious way.
Railqual and Passengers Satisfaction: An Empirical Study in Southern Railways
Authors: Vanniarajan T. , Stephen A.
Published: March 2013

This article identifies the attributes which passengers use to evaluate the service quality of Indian railways and develops a comprehensive instrument namely RAILQUAL. The linkage between Railqual and passengers’ satisfaction is also evaluated by the data collected from the passengers of Southern Railways. The important railqual factors identified by the passengers are reliability, assurance and empathy. The service offered by southern railways is up to the expectation of their passengers. The significantly and positively influencing railqual factors on the passenger's satisfaction and image of the Indian railways are its reliability and empathy. The intangible aspects of service performance of Indian railways have a strong direct and positive effect on the passenger's favourable attitude and image. This study would help the policymakers to monitor, control and improve their service at the international level. It can also be used as an evaluation tool for comparing the performance of Indian railways with reference to the passengers’ expectation.
A Study of General Role Stress among IT/ITeS Professional in India
Authors: Bhatt Seema , Verma Prashant
Published: March 2013

IT/ITeS industry in India got tremendous boost in the past decade due to factors like liberalisation and globalisation of the Indian economy coupled with favourable government policies. This sector of the sunshine industry brought a new work environment and sea changes in the employment trends. Service providers characterized this sector by adhering to strict deadlines set by their customers, working in different time zones, interdependency in teams, multitasking, increased interaction with offshore clients and extended work hours. IT/ITeS professionals are constantly under pressure to deliver the services efficiently as well as to remain cost effective. The customer expectation in terms of skills required for processing jobs keeps changing and forces professionals to upgrade/adapt very fast to their demands. At times IT/ITeS professionals are forced to change the entire paradigms amidst constant uncertainty and high risk. These working conditions lead to high stress in the professionals. Organisations have started recognising high stress as a worthy area to address growing attrition rate prevalent in this sector. The research attempts to study the stress faced by IT/ITeS professionals (age group 22–28 years). Instrument on General Role Stress developed and standardized by Udai Pareek, was administered to 120 IT/ITeS professionals. The instrument measured level of four stressors viz. SRD, IRD, RB & Pin. Analysis of data rejected the hypothesis that there is no significant difference between the four stressors; level of RB was significantly higher.
Shifting Patterns of Global Growth?
Authors: Floyd David , Summan Sandhla , McManus John , Ling Marcus
Published: March 2013

The current slowdown in the USA Economy has led many to question whether this will have a knock on effect in destroying global growth. This paper looks at the channels of global growth in 2008 to see whether the above view may be justified. In addition the paper draws on theories of globalisation and growth to explain recent trade patterns and makes suggestions on where growth is heading in the future. Data is used from world Economic Indicators to support the main arguments. Comparative profiles are then made of the important country players in global business. The evidence would suggest that countries both East and West are being to converge in their policy making though in the short term the current favourable growth of Eastern countries such as India and China will play a large part in maintaining positive global growth. On the negative side in January 2008 there was stock market turbulence in all world markets indicating the high degree of interconnectivity existing around the world in todays business environment. Furthermore much of the slowdown in the USA has been attributed to defaults on loans financed from the global capital markets. This financial crisis has a knock on effect in world markets and was caused by the banking system rather originating from problems in emerging markets as had often occurred in the past. In some ways even if the USA reduces interest rates rapidly to stimulate growth as has been done in January 2008 it does not mean that credit will automatically become easier. The LIBOR Rate will remain high as long as global banks fear lending to those with high risk of default. House prices in the USA and shares in banks have fallen almost 20% over the last year according to Bloomburg March 2008.
Effectiveness of OR in Real-Life Applications for Better Returns
Authors: Kumar Santosh , Kapur P.K. , Jha P.C.
Published: March 2013

The paper attempts to delineate a relationship between Operations Research, a study that deals with improving utilization of limited resources; and revenue maximization, a field that has its roots in commerce and industry. These are two independent fields that can be enriched by adopting each other's strategies, since they both share a common goal of improving returns. It is also true that no real life system can operate in isolation; all systems experience interactions with other systems, and consequently changes in such systems are inevitable. These changing systems have been defined as protean systems. In analysing the real life systems, which are protean in character, the approach through information recycling might be a better way. These ideas give rise to new mathematical challenges and these ideas are being explored in the paper.
Employees Perception towards Training in IT Sector
Authors: Agarwal Manish , Nayak Tapan Kumar , Gupta V. P.
Published: March 2013

Employees training in IT sector help companies as well as employees to improve their performance. Hence, keeping these in mind, the companies are eager to go for the training programs for their employees with regular intervals in the IT sector. These training programs definitely result in skill enhancement, improved efficiency and productivity and growth opportunities for employees. This paper attempts to study the factors which affect the employee's perception towards training in IT sector. In this respect different IT companies in NCR region were selected and data was collected from 170 employees of different IT companies through a structured questionnaire. The data collected was then subjected to Factor Analysis i.e. Principal Component Analysis with Varimax rotation. A total of seven factors affecting employee's perception came to the forefront from this study of IT sector.
Empirical Testing of Strong Form of Market Efficiency
Authors: Gupta Deepak , Anand Arti , Singh Rohini
Published: March 2013

The majority of efficient market research to date has focused on developed markets like United States and European securities market. Not much research has been done on strong form of the efficient market hypothesis in developing countries markets like India. The efficient market hypothesis suggests that stock markets are “information efficient”, i.e., any new information relevant to the market is spontaneously reflected in the stock prices, so nobody can use such information to consistently earn abnormally high returns. This paper shows that the Indian market is strong form efficient to the extent that mutual fund managers could not out perform randomly constructed portfolios of index stocks for the period 2003–2007. This implies that an investor can build his/her own portfolio without any expert guidance and still earn returns comparable to professionally managed funds.
Effects of Working Environment on the Performance of Executives
Authors: Ganapathi R. , Prasad M. Balaji
Published: March 2013

Working environment plays a crucial role in enhancing the performance of an individual and the organization as a whole. In poor working environment, it becomes particularly challenging to maintain a productive and satisfying work life and in turn threatens the work success. An attempt has been made to study the level of satisfaction of the executives in terms of the various environmental factors that are contributing for the effective performance. The authors emphasize the need to follow the right mix of management and environmental techniques and behavior principles, both formal and informal to create no boredom working environment. Article concludes with a number of counter measures to be followed by the organization to create a conducive working environment backed up by genuine efforts to motivate the human resources.
Development of Plastic Cards Market: Past, Present and Future Scenario in Indian Banks
Authors: Kaur Mandeep , Kaur Kamalpreet
Published: March 2013

The current study presents an overview of the development of banking in India from time to time specifically focused on the plastic cards usage trends since these have been introduced in Indian banking sector. Various types of plastic cards provided by banks in India like ATM cards, Debit Cards, Credit Cards and Smart cards have been discussed. The study also highlights the role of these cards as electronic payment tool to be used by customers and discusses clearing and settlement process of these cards. Some future plans made by various banks and institutions are also summarized in a way that it depicts the picture of its future growth and prospects in India.
Relevance of Signaling and Smoothing Approaches to Dividend: A Study of Indian IT Sector
Authors: Anil Kanwal , Kapoor Sujata
Published: March 2013

The study is an attempt to validate Linter dividend policy model in Indian Information Technology sector. More importantly, it establishes a relationship between PAT and equity dividend with the aid of multiple regression analysis. The basic objective of the study is to identify the primary determinant of dividend policy in Indian Information Technology industry. Thus, this paper investigates whether IT firms strive for stability and regularity of dividends and tend to arrive at a target payout ratio or not. An effort has been made to find the applicability of dividend signaling and smoothing approaches in IT sector by empirically testing the Linter model through our study. The findings suggest that current year profits is the major determinant of dividend decision in IT sector. The dividend payout of IT companies fluctuates with the earnings.
Barriers to Change: A Case Study of Selected Units of Southern Rajasthan
Authors: Tanwar Sunita
Published: March 2013

Present study investigates the factors resisting the change implementation in the business organizations of Southern Rajasthan. Sample data has been collected from 240 executives and 150 operation level employees from different categories of the units selected such as New Economy Units, Manufacturing Units and Mining Units. Statistical analysis has been done to analyze the factors at different levels of management to find the change implementation related to people, structure task and behaviour.
How Empowering is Micro Entrepreneurship Developed through Microfinance?
Authors: Basargekar Prema
Published: March 2013

Stimulating entrepreneurship among women especially from lower socio-economic strata is seen as an effective tool to alleviate poverty, reduce gender bias and empower them by many micro finance institutions. This paper tries to find the relationship between micro-entrepreneurship and economic empowerment of women by looking into actual utilization of loan taken by SHG members through microfinance programme. The study is based on primary data analysis of 217 SHG members of the microfinance programme launched by Forbes Marshall Company in India. Based on Kabeer's analogy of empowerment i.e resources, agency and outcomes, certain parameters of economic empowerment were selected to judge the level of economic empowerment of SHG members. The study involves the comparative analysis of empowerment of SHG members, who were classified into micro entrepreneurs and non entrepreneurs to check the hypothesis whether productive loans are more empowering than non productive loans.
Predictors of Effective IS Strategy Implementation: A longitudinal Study of Indian organizations
Authors: Kannabiran Ganesan , Sharda Ramesh , Gupta Ashish , Wilson Rick
Published: March 2013

The overall outcome of SISP (Strategic Information Systems Planning) depends on how effectively IS strategies are implemented. Several organizational and environmental variables predict effective IS strategy implementation. This empirical work investigates the impact of changes in the predictors on the effective implementation of IS strategy over two successive planning periods. Based on longitudinal case studies of three Indian organizations from diverse industries, we analyze the changes in five important predictors—top management commitment, IS plan characteristics, technological environment, user involvement and role of the IS function. The Findings are then related to implementation effectiveness measured through rate of implementation, extent of implementation, and attainment of IS objectives. Our research shows that these key predictors have undergone major changes over two planning periods and that such changes have greatly improved the effectiveness of IS strategy implementation. Based on the analysis, we present a set of implications for developing countries and directions for future research.
Understanding the Buying Behavior of the Apparel Customers in the Organized Retail Formats
Authors: Rishi Bikramjit
Published: March 2013

Apparel Retailing in India is gradually inching its way to becoming major contributor in the retailing growth in India. The whole concept of shopping in apparel category has undergone change in terms of format and consumer buying behavior, ushering in a revolution in shopping. This paper makes a contribution towards a comprehensive understanding of the Indian buyer towards the apparel buying from the organized retail market. It is desirable for organized retailers to acquire such knowledge in order to devise suitable strategies to enter and compete in the Indian retail marketplace. In addition, this study provides researchers to undertake more in-depth analysis of the market to explore the different facets of the attractive yet complex Indian retailing environment.
Evaluating Indian Investors Response towards Service Quality of Mutual Funds Companies in India and Studying Changes in their Advertisement Information
Authors: Kothari Rajesh , Sharma Narendra
Published: March 2013

Mutual funds are those kinds of services which have heterogeneity at maximum level. For example, Reliance mutual fund has almost same tax planning fund as that of Birla sun life mutual fund. So, perceiving service quality becomes more tiresome task for customer in this industry. In the present paper, we have explored Parasuraman's 5 dimensions of services for mutual funds in India. By doing some statistical analysis, we identified that high familiarity of corporate brand in mutual fund industry in India is more influential than any other factor. So advertising, for increasing this awareness can help in better recall thereby adding value towards perceived service quality for mutual funds in India. Post-liberalization Print advertisements for mutual funds have used risk-return, credibility, transaction cost and convenience information to influence the perception of the prospective investors. We have discovered changes in this information for mutual funds over period of time and reason for dissatisfaction amongst mutual fund holders.
Market Reaction to Bonus Issues in the Indian Stock Market
Authors: Sharma Jyoti , Singh Rohini
Published: March 2013

The aim of the study is to examine the semi-strong form efficiency of the Indian stock market and determine whether the market reacts to information regarding bonus issues. Bonus issues are expected to send positive signals to investors and hence prices are expected to rise when an issue is announced. If there is a significant predictable increase in price after the bonus announcement that can be used to make abnormal profits, the market is considered to be inefficient. Twenty five bonus issues between 2002 and 2007 were studied using the event study methodology and abnormal returns were calculated using the market model. Although the study showed a positive market reaction to the bonus issues, the results were not statistically significant. This shows that the Indian market is semi-strong form efficient.
Seasonality in Stock Returns: A Study of Emerging and Developed Stock Markets
Authors: Mangala Deepa , Dhawan Monika
Published: March 2013

The seasonal patterns in stock returns have been extensively investigated and documented, yet their logic and practical applicability is still being questioned. The objective of this paper is to examine the existence of day-of-the-week effect across stock markets of six countries — three developed and three emerging economies. Popular stock market indices namely Dow Jones (US), FTSE (UK) and Nikkei (Japan) represent developed stock markets while Bovespa (Brazil), Heng Seng (Hong Kong) and Nifty (India) represent emerging stock markets. Daily closing values of these indices have been analyzed over fifteen years period commencing from January 1994 to December 2008. A set of parametric and non-parametric tests have been used to examine the equality of mean returns across various days of the week. The study shows that developed stock markets are less volatile and more efficient than emerging stock markets.
Empirical Evidence on the Efficiency of Index Options Market in India
Authors: Aggarwal Navdeep , Gupta Mohit
Published: March 2013

While efficiency of index options market in the USA and Europe has attracted the attention of researchers for a long time, smaller and relatively new markets like India continue to lack systematic research. This paper examined the efficiency of the index options market using daily closing on Nifty 50 index options for the period of January 1, 2006 to March 31, 2009. We used three arbitrage pricing relationships, namely, call and put spreads, box spreads and call and put convexities or butterfly spreads to carry out the tests. These spreads allowed to examine the internal efficiency of the Indian options market regardless of its efficiency relative to the cash market for the stocks constituting Nifty 50 index. Various transaction costs (bid-ask spread, brokerage, taxes etc.) were also incorporated into tests. Despite incorporating transaction costs, frequent and large violations of the box spread relationship in particular were found. However, at the same time, there were fewer violations of call and put spreads and convexity, though they are less demanding tests of pricing efficiency than the box spread. As these findings are similar to those developed and large markets, the efficiency in Indian index options market can be taken as thus be comparable to that of old developed markets. Market frictions had a significant effect on arbitrageurs' abilities to take advantage of violations of no-arbitrage pricing relationships. However, the size of profit potential for low cost intuitional traders might be quite large.
Diversity and Effectiveness: A Case of Software Project Teams
Authors: Velayudhan A. , Gayatridevi S. , Srividya S.
Published: March 2013

The objective of the study was to analyze the differences between the members of a Software Project in Team Effectiveness and to examine the influence of the factors on Team Diversity. Two hundred software professionals, consisting of five groups, were surveyed using Team Effectiveness and the Team Diversity Questionnaires. The results showed that Team Diversity have no bearing on software professionals on matters relating to Team Effectiveness. Three sub-dimensions of the questionnaire were found to influence Team Effectiveness namely, Sorting Disagreement within the Teams, Participation and Involvement, and Informality among Team Members.
Philosophy of the Sustainable Future of Mankind
Authors: Ecimovic Timi
Published: March 2013

Philosophy of sustainable future of mankind is the search for knowledge and understanding of the nature and meaning of the universe and life. The knowledge is most important achievement of Homo sapiens present civilization. Under the progressing the threat of the impact of the climate change system to the biosphere of the planet Earth, which is changing living conditions, our civilization has to meet the challenges and establish a path for long term survival. Present global social order, life style, education, ethics and daily practice of humans needs to undergo a fundamental renewal to meet the needs for long term survival during and after the third millennium. The discussion in the paper presents a contemporary sciences approach to the present the Nature, energy, drinking water, food, credit and societal crisis of humankind at 2010. The present civilization or our humankind is facing the largest complex societal crisis, which is also closely inter-related with the impact of the climate change system or evolving planet Earth Biosphere «crisis». The impact of the climate change system may in the long run change: biology, geography and living conditions within the biosphere, from suitable ones of the last 12.000 years, to environment not suitable for Homo sapiens to live. It is making more complicated or complex of the present social crisis of: energy, drinking water, food and credit. In 2010 we are entering difficult times for humankind. The corporate and individual social responsibility is a part of our society with much more importance as we are thinking at present. The possibility for survival is closely connected with social technology/technique of the «Sustainable Future of Humankind» or harmony of our civilization with the Nature of the planet Earth 3 . The corporate and individual social responsibility will have to play a more important part in future, for new great achievement of our civilization to overcome the crisis of living conditions within the biosphere of the planet Earth and present credit, energy, drinking water, and food crisis of our global community. The sustainable future of mankind or harmony of our civilization with the nature of the planet Earth is therefore an option for mankind to survive approaching impact of the climate change system at the biosphere of the planet Earth.
Global Climate Change, Emissions Trading and Sustainable Energy Development
Authors: Sarkar A. N.
Published: March 2013

Global warming and Greenhouse effects are a direct consequence of climate change, triggered mainly by emissions of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs). Various National and International Agencies are actively involved through carefully drawn programme initiatives to progressively reduce GHG emissions. Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), Emissions Trading, and emerging Carbon Market aiming at Carbon Neutrality in phases are some among the major initiatives at both country and regional levels that are seemingly retarding initial momentum to comply with Kyoto Protocol commitments in recent time. IFCCC, International Financial Institutions (e.g. The World Bank, ADB etc.) have played a pivotal role to proactively help reduce emissions at Sectoral, Project level, Country and Regional level. National and International policy support towards sustainable energy development in a Mission mode is suggested in this paper as a pragmatic approach to bring in reversal of the climate change processes while ensuring energy security in one hand, health and environmental safety on the other through progressive reduction of emissions-primarily through international cooperation. Post-Kyoto and Post-Copenhagen perspectives and much needed global initiatives on Sustainable Energy Development is also highlighted in the paper.
Social Justice Instead of Greenhouse Gases-How the Global Economy Needs to Transform
Authors: Bladh Daniel
Published: March 2013

Different explanations have been presented why the recent UN Summit on Climate Change failed. One explanation which has not been highlighted extensively is related to the fundamental conflict between the current economical system and the urgent demand of drastic reductions of greenhouse gases. Since the climate crisis demonstrates that the environment and the climate badly adjust to the needs of the economy, what is needed is instead the need for an adjustment of the current economical system. This paper discusses some of the current tendencies in the global economy which are neither sustainable nor desirable. It also tries to identify some principles for the design of a completely new global way of producing, consuming, trading and transporting. The reference for change is the need for democratization and localization of the economy.
Impact of Climate Change in Mining Region — A Case Study
Authors: Singh Prasoon Kumar , Singh Ruchi , Bhakat Dipanwita , Singh Gurdeep
Published: March 2013

Climate change affects the mining region both directly and indirectly; and among the different environmental impacts of mining a very prominent one is damage to water resources. If mining is conducted below water table, ground water flows into the excavation site. It needs excessive ground water withdrawal that creates lowering of water table and resource depletion in the surrounding region. Water availability is dependent on rainfall. Subsurface reservoirs or aquifers are a blessing of nature to ensure water availability. The distribution pattern of the groundwater resources are influenced by the geomorphology, topography, terrain characteristics, geo-tectonic disturbances, characteristic of the source, recharging zones etc. Of late, this valuable resource is getting affected and progressively depleted by the change of climatic conditions. Talcher coalfield of Mahanadi Coalfield (MCL) – a subsidiary of Coal India Limited is one of the important coal-bearing regions in Orissa. One major river i.e., Brahmani river is passing in the NE direction of the Talcher area. Jharia Coalfield occupies an important place in India's industrial and energy scenario by virtue of being the storehouse of Prime coking coal. Damodar is main river passing over southwest direction of Jharia coalfield. The paper focuses on the impact of climate change on the changing pattern in respect of the characteristics of geology, rainfall and water-table fluctuations of both the Talcher and Jharia coalfields in the study area.
Global Climate Change: A Strategic and Operational Framework for Future Negotiations beyond Copenhagen
Authors: Sarkar A. N. , Banerjee Dilip Kumar
Published: March 2013

Global climate change – essentially an adverse consequence of global warming, is principally caused by progressive build-up and extensive spread of greenhouse gases (ghgs) across countries, regions or continents, together with adverse effects of various other anthropogenic activities. The potent sources of ghgs are fossil-fuels and biomass. With the increasing pace of globalization, industrialization and rapid change of life-style the demand and consumption of these feed-stocks to stimulate economic growth is steadily rising – both in the developed and developing economy. In the process, the emissions level is also rising phenomenally; and fast becoming alarming to impact global climate. Kyoto Protocol signed in 1997 (COP3) and Bali Roadmap designed by COP14, a decade later in 2007, inter alia, made concerted effort to reduce emissions level substantially in a legally binding manner for the Annexure-I developed/industrialized nations by 2012 and beyond. The key objective of the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December 2009 was to continue and improve the existing Kyoto agreement from 1997, which ends in 2012. The new Copenhagen Protocol and the amended Kyoto Protocol (i.e. two tracks) would form the core of the Agreement in December, 2010 at Mexico with the main elements agreed to and a process with the details thereof to be finalized through decisions in a year or so, in order to ensure ratification by 2011. The paper is a conceptualization, collation, review and documentation of various elements related to global climate change issues and policies – from the historic past till December, 2009. The paper, based on this exercise, also offers a broad Strategic and operational framework for future climate negotiations beyond Copenhagen.
Retail Logistics Practices of Indian Fresh Vegetables Market
Authors: Rajkumar Paulrajan , Jacob Fatima
Published: March 2013

Vegetables are a staple food for people and vegetable marketing is an influential force in any Economy. The cascading effects of India's trade policy changes towards globalisation have lead to the development of organised vegetable retailing. Depending upon the competency and level of complexity, different organisations evolve different systems to make fresh vegetables available to their customers. The aim of this paper is to report the findings from the present research study to understand the current logistical scenario in the retail marketing of vegetables adopted by different players. The research is primarily exploratory in nature and research instruments include interviews and surveys through questionnaire distributed to different players in the vegetable supply chain viz., agents, auctioneers, contract farmers, lease farmers, agents, auctioneers, wholesalers, traditional retailers, organised retailers and customers. Vegetable retailers and customers from Chennai city are the focal points. This study reveals four distinct logistical practices prevalent in the vegetable retail marketing, namely Traditional, Own Farm, Short Chain and Collaborative models. These descriptive models demonstrate the logistical practices followed in vegetable retail marketing in Chennai.
Co-Movement of Emerging and Developed Market Indices
Authors: Tripathi Gireesh Chandra , Jain Amit , Mehra Vishal
Published: March 2013

The globe is considered to be a single economic unit because the cross-border movements are common. Financial markets are no exceptions as the flow of capital within different parts of the globe has been leading to the integration of global markets. This study examines the extent of interdependence of developed as well as emerging economies with the help of correlation coefficients associated with the co-movement of their stock markets on daily, weekly and monthly returns. The impact of LIBOR – a global macroeconomic variable, on the stock indices has also been examined. The results show that the correlation coefficients within as well between emerging and developed economies have been found to be high; indicating the extent of integration of global markets. Also, stock indices of developed countries move more in line with LIBOR in comparison to the emerging economies. The mean returns as well the volatility is higher and impact of LIBOR is lower in emerging economies than developed ones, making the emerging economies to be attractive destinations for investment.
Forecasting Stock Market Volatility of Bse-30 Index Using Garch Models
Authors: Srinivasan P. , Ibrahim P.
Published: March 2013

Volatility forecasting is an important area of research in financial markets and immense effort has been made in improving volatility models since better forecasts translate themselves into better pricing of options and better risk management. In this direction, the present paper attempts to modelling and forecasting the volatility (conditional variance) of the SENSEX Index returns of Indian stock market, using daily data, covering a period from 1st January 1996 to 29th January 2010. The forecasting models that are considered in this study range from the relatively simple GARCH (1,1) model to relatively complex GARCH models (including Exponential GARCH (1,1) and Threshold GARCH (1,1) models). Based on out-of-sample forecasts and a majority of evaluation measures, our result shows that the symmetric GARCH model do perform better in forecasting conditional variance of the SENSEX Index return rather than the asymmetric GARCH models, despite the presence of leverage effect. Findings of the study are consistent with the evidence of Deb, Vuyyuri and Roy (2003) that parsimonious symmetric GARCH model is found superior in forecasting the conditional variance of SENSEX Index market returns rather than the asymmetric GARCH models.