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FPM Home Programme Overview Eligibility and Admission Process Faculty & Research Areas Scholarship and Other Support Current Students Research Training Seminars Research Review Seminars Papers/Reports Links & Resources FAQs Advance notice "Research is | | Appropriate Research Design: A discussion of the elements of the process of research Date: 15 July 2011 Speaker: Sanjeev Jha, University of New Hampshire Abstract: Conducting a scholarly research project is time-intensive. It is therefore important to choose an appropriate design for your research and to have an understanding of the elements of the process of research (Creswell, 2009). In this seminar, we will discuss the two major kinds of research designs (qualitative and quantitative) and the key elements of the process of research (introduction, purpose of the study, research questions and hypotheses, methods, and analysis). The seminar will be interactive with a lecture and class exercises. Gender and audit committee diligence Date: 12 August 2011 Speaker: Sheela Thiruvadi, Assistant Professor, Accounting & Finance, School of Business and Management Abstract: The motivation for this study is due to the concerns by US Securities and Exchange Commissission (SEC 1999a, 1999b, 2003a, 2003b) regarding the importance of the composition and activities of audit committees. Private sector commissions and large audit firms have repeatedly emphasized the need for frequent audit committee meetings. Prior studies show that women are under-represented in corporate boards (Burke and Mattis, 2000). Women can greatly enhance board deliberations because they “provide unique perspectives, experiences, and work styles as compared to their male counterparts” (Daily and Dalton 2003). Daily and Dalton (2003) argue that women’s “communication styles tend to be more participative and process-oriented.” Hence, the presence of at least one female director on the audit committee will likely lead to an increase in the number of audit committee meetings. Therefore, I examine if audit committees that have at least one female director will meet more often than all male audit committees using 276 non-financial firms with a December 31 fiscal year end in the S&P SmallCap 600 index. Decomposing returns to scale in two-stage network DEA. Date: 2 December 2011 Speaker: Biresh K Sahoo, Professor of Economics, XIMB Abstract: The constant returns to scale (CRS) assumption maintained by the neoclassical theorists for justifying the structure of the black-box production process in the long run does not necessarily allow one to infer that there are no scale benefits available in the sub-processes. Since most of the real-life production processes are multi-stage in nature, and the real sources of increasing returns lie in the sub-processes, it is imperative to unfold the black-box technology. To accomplish this, we consider a special case of modeling a firm technology consisting of two sub-technologies connected in series in which we suggest two approaches to estimate returns to scale (RTS) behaviors of firms. The first approach involves the use of a single variable returns to scale (VRS)-based production frontier for two sub-technologies to determine RTS of firms in the network technology along with their sub-technologies, and the second approach makes use of two independent VRS-based production frontiers, one for each sub-technology to determine RTS of firms in their sub-technologies. Caste, class and Public Policy in India: A quantitative macro-level analysis Date : 13 January 2012 Speaker: Pradipta Chaudhury, Professor Of Economic History, Centre For Economic Studies And Planning, School Of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi Abstract: Caste is the most widely used unit for analysing Indian society. During the last century it has become the sole indicator of deprivation in framing and implementing public policy, which aims to redress socio-economic disadvantage and discrimination. Concomitantly, Indian politics is increasingly organised along caste lines. Politicians and intellectuals of all ideologies hail the politics of caste identities and the public policy based on caste. They claim that these are genuine moves towards equality. However, the protagonists of caste-based politics and public policy simply have not validated their assertions with solid evidence. They offer only small-sample surveys that can be grossly misleading in the context of a huge country characterized by monumental diversity. Moreover, these studies typically pool the castes into a few large groups. Such lumping together is likely to obscure the real picture. My paper makes first use of the huge mass of quantitative evidence available in the census reports of the period from 1901 to 1931, the only period for which such data are available. It investigates the three most important issues relating to caste. First, it analyses the empirical links between the ritual and economic status of castes at the province/state level, while treating each caste separately. Second, it investigates whether the caste system has been rigid. Third, it evaluates the justification for the use of caste in public policy. My findings strongly contest the conventional wisdom. At the same time, the crucial role of caste in dividing the poor, thereby sustaining inequity and in depressing the wage rate is illuminated. What limits the adoption and effectiveness of index-based weather insurance? New evidence from the field in India Date: 24 February 2012 Speaker: Sarthak Gaurav, Ph.D Candidate, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai Abstract: Index-based weather insurance has emerged as a promising financial innovation to weather proof farm incomes in the developing world agriculture, but its slow adoption has been puzzling. This paper investigates the factors influencing take-up and tests the predictions of a benchmark model of insurance take-up on one hand, and critically assesses the limitations of the supply side of index-based rainfall insurance on the other. Using microdata from two agro-ecological zones of the Indian state of Gujarat, where rainfall insurance was introduced, the effectiveness of the complex insurance products is found to be primarily limited by consumer literacy, basis risk and design issues. Furthermore, the contracts do not factor in the heterogeneity in farmer and farm characteristics, nor the autonomous responses of the farmers and the localized variations in institutional context of risk management. The findings suggest that informational barriers and structural problems in product design need to be addressed and the technological narrative should communicate the limitations and uncertainties embedded in the contracts rather than focusing on the expected benefits alone, for index-based weather insurance to emerge as an effective weather risk adaptation strategy. |
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