The Indian Economic Journal

This research reinvestigates stock market linkages in Asian region by employing Johansen cointegration and vector error correction model (VECM) based causality tests. The stock price indexes of Japan, Singapore, South Korea, India and China are used, with monthly data over 1999:09–2019:10. The empirical results find weak price convergence among Asian markets, hence are almost segmented by national borders. The asymmetrical stock price relations in Asia have important implications for the pricing efficiency of national markets and suggest several opportunities for global investors to optimise returns through portfolio diversifications across leading stock markets of the region.

JEL Codes: C58; G11; G15

The emphasis on enhancing and specialising in technology exports and altering policy environment in Asian economies has been dominant since 2000. The present study is an attempt to empirically investigate the effect of technology exports on enhancing growth of Asian economies during the period 2001 to 2018. To assess the linkages between growth, investments, labour productivity and technology exports, panel least squares with cross section weights is applied for the economies. To assess the relationship between the variables for each individual country ARDL technique is applied. The results indicate long run relationship between low, medium low and medium high technology exports and growth as well as domestic investment and growth. For individual nations, the results indicate varying intensity of technology exports have a different relationship with growth. The results also suggest the need for Government of each nation to enhance its effort on the development of policies which focus on attracting investments and further promoting exports of technology intensive sectors.

JEL Codes: F14, F60, O19

There are studies available that study the influence of corruption on economic growth, but no existing literature studies the asymmetric relationship in context to BRICS countries. In this study, we try to fill the gap in the literature by studying the symmetric and asymmetric association between corruption, political stability and economic growth in BRICS economies where gross fixed capital formation and final consumption expenditure are considered additional variables. Further, we employ panel non-linear autoregressive distributed lag model from 1996–2018. In the long run, the non-linear estimation results confirm an asymmetric relationship while all variables show the asymmetric relationship in the short run. Additionally, the study has employed Dumitrescu–Hurlin (2012) test to find the direction of causality among the variables. The test confirms the causality in particular variables taking economic growth as dependent variable and the decomposed explanatory variables. The article’s findings provide new insight into the relationship between corruption, political stability and economic growth.

JEL Codes: D73, F35

The article investigates factors that may be responsible for observed instability in Nigeria’s manufacturing sector performance. Based on growing concerns regarding early deindustrialisation observed for many developing countries, the study examines how a menu of fiscal and monetary policies can be applied to revitalise the Nigerian manufacturing sector. Consequently, we construct an index of manufacturing sector instability and examine how it responds to a mixture of fiscal and monetary policy variables. We use annual time series data from 1981–2018 and apply the ARDL bounds test technique. Our findings show that budget deficits induce instability in the performance of the Nigerian manufacturing sector, while government infrastructural investments stabilise it. The monetary policy instruments were found to have inconsistent short-run and long-run influences but mostly conform with theory.

JEL Codes: F63, L20, L25, L60, O10, O14

The unorganised manufacturing industries play a vital role in the process of industrial development of the Indian economy. Informal firms are relatively less productive than formal firms, because a majority of the firms are technically inefficient, producing far below the actual attainable level of production. This article examines differences in efficiency and output between formal and informal production firms across India’s manufacturing industries. The key novelty in this article is in studying both the formal and informal sectors simultaneously by applying the technique of Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition to determine efficiency differences across the sectors. The results suggest that capital is a positive and the most significant determinant of the output of efficient industries. Output gaps can be explained by coefficient, endowment and interaction aspects of capital and capital productivity, while efficiency differences are explained by coefficient and interaction characteristics of emoluments and capital productivity. The results of density plots show that informal firms are no longer functioning as a pool of surplus labour in the context of Indian manufacturing industries during these years. The results dispel the notion that the informal sector is a poor performer in terms of total output compared to the formal sector. Also, capital and capital productivity are less in informal manufacturing industries than in the formal sector.

JEL Codes: E26, J46, O14, O17

Regulations are put in place in the capital markets to protect the interests of investors while promoting companies to actively participate in the capital markets. This multidisciplinary study concentrates on analysing the impact of one such regulation, based on entry norms, on the initial returns of book-built IPOs in the presence of firm-related and issue-related control variables, thereby facilitating decision-making to issuers and investors.

Using various parametric and non-parametric tests on 259 IPOs issued on Indian Stock Exchanges during financial year 2009–2010 to 2019–2020, it can be concluded that Indian IPOs are underpriced on an average, irrespective of the entry norm followed. Further, firms entering through either of the entry routes, that is, profitability route or Qualified Institutional Buyer Route have significant differences in age, listing delay, type of sale, rank of lead managers and industry. Entry norm is established to have a negative yet insignificant role in determining the initial returns, while oversubscription is the only variable with a positive and significant impact on the initial returns of the issue.

JEL Codes: G10, G14, G18, G23, K22

The role of money in influencing real economic activities has been a long-standing debate in macroeconomics. As per the Keynesian theory, household consumption expenditure plays a significant role in promoting economic growth. Given the rapid consumption-led growth pattern in the emerging Asia Pacific region, in this article, we attempt to assess the role of money in influencing household consumption expenditure, which propels economic growth. We employ a panel data set from 2005–2018 for 10 emerging Asian economies, covering Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. Given the region’s heterogeneous nature, we employ a variant of the popular St Louise equation model with autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) panel framework based on pooled mean group (PMG) and dynamic fixed effect (DFE) models developed by Pesaran and Shin to study the underlying relationships. Both PMG and DFE models suggest a strong positive relationship between money and household consumption expenditure both in the long run and short run. After allowing for control variables such as government final consumption expenditure and interest rate, the relationships continue to hold steady. Further, the relationship holds true across both narrow (M1) and broad money (M3) measures. The government final consumption expenditure and interest rates do not have influence on household consumption expenditure in the long run, but they have an influence in the short run.

JEL Codes: C23, O16, O47, E51, E31, E21

One of the major policy concerns in recent years has been decline in the number of women workers in the Indian labour market. The ‘education’ and ‘income’ effect hypotheses for such decline are generally advocated. Such analyses, however, are limited in their focus. This study attempts to fill up this gap by exclusively focusing on rural women. Using the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) data for the years 2004–2005 and 2011–2012 and Periodic Labour Force Survey data for the year 2017–2018, it observes a widespread decline in rural women’s work participation rates (WPRs) across their different social groups, income strata and states in the country albeit at a significantly varying rate. While the major decline in women WPRs in the age-group, 15–24 years has been in favour of education, it has been largely in favour of ‘domestic works’ in the other age-groups. The major decline in women workforce is observed in case of those as not-literates, ‘unpaid family labour’ in agriculture and ‘casual wage labour’ both in farm and non-farm sectors. This is largely due to contraction in self-employment and casual wage works both in farm and non-farm sectors, more so during recent period. This study finds a positive impact of rising household income on women’s WPRs. While education emerges as a significant predictor of women joining workforce, its iteration with their social groups shows differing impact of similar level of education on different caste groups. It offers inputs for policy measures to be aimed at providing decent livelihoods in rural areas in a big scale, with strong focus on reducing caste and gender disparities.

JEL Codes: E24, J16, J21, J18

Indian direct tax collections have remained sluggish over the period coupled with the lesser tax buoyancy have compelled the government to collect revenues from the untapped or under-tapped sources to finance the galloping expenditure such as the health and defence. To achieve the fixed money value targets the taxmen have been putting excessive pressures on the taxpayers who have created a panic, likely to tantamount to infamous tax terrorism and tax disputes have arisen blocking substantial tax revenues in litigations. Taking this in to cognisance the government has attempted to rationalise the tax system by introducing tax amnesty scheme such as the Vivad-se-Viswas and by launching a Faceless Assessment Scheme (FAS) and tax charter, which is likely to address the tax disputes significantly. To increase the revenue, the best approach for the government is to broadening the tax base, reducing the tax rates, rationalising the tax system, formalising the unorganised sectors and by enhancing the lower household incomes substantially in lieu of serving notices to the non-filers is the need of the hour.

JEL Codes: E62, H25

India has rapidly evolved into a fast-growing emerging market with one of the largest start-up ecosystems in the world. Despite the rapid strides, the nature of investment distribution of start-ups remain heavily concentrated in specific regions within India, fuelling concerns of regional disparities. In this research note, I empirically explore the determinants of start-up investments in India’s subnational economies, to identify the conditioning variables that possibly drive such investments.

JEL Codes: L26, O53, R11, R12