Crystal growth and magnetic properties of equiatomic CeAl

Single crystal of CeAl has been grown by flux method using Ce-Al self-flux. Several needle like single crystals were obtained and the length of the needle corresponds to the [001] crystallographic direction. Powder x-ray diffraction revealed that CeAl crystallizes in orthorhombic CrB-type structure with space group ${Cmcm}$ (no. 63). The magnetic properties have been investigated by means of magnetic susceptibility, isothermal magnetization, electrical transport, and heat capacity measurements. CeAl is found to order antiferromagnetically with a N$\grave{\rm e}$el temperature $T_{\rm N}$ = 10K. The magnetization data below the ordering temperature reveals two metamagentic transitions for fields less than 20kOe. From the inverse magnetic susceptibility an effective moment of $2.66\mu_{\rm B}$/Ce has been estimated, which indicates that Ce is in its trivalent state. Electrical resistivity data clearly shows a sharp drop at 10K due to the reduction of spin disorder scattering of conduction electrons thus confirming the magnetic ordering. The estimated residual resistivity ratio (RRR) is 33, thus indicating a good quality of the single crystal. The bulk nature of the magnetic ordering is also confirmed by heat capacity data. From the Schottky anomaly of the heat capacity we have estimated the crystal field level splitting energies of the $(2J+1)$ degenerate ground state as 25K and 175K respectively for the fist and second excited states.Comment: Submitted to SCES -2014 Conference Proceedings (IoP conference series); 6 pages and 5 figure

Finance and Growth: An Empirical Assessment of the Indian Economy

This study is an attempt towards an integration of financial development and its effect on the real sector via the transmission mechanism with special reference to developing and emerging market economies. It finds two cointegrating relations between the financial development, output growth and allocation of credit which makes sense from the standpoint of economic theory. The paper also addresses the issue of causality between finance and growth for the aggregate and broad sectors of the economy. The relations, however, are not similar across the broad sectors of the economy and thus have separate policy implications for different sectors.financial institutions, financial development, transmission mechanism, credit, cointegration

Religious Minorities and Provision of Public Goods: Evidence from Rural West Bengal

Religious and ethnic minorities across the world face partisan treatment with regard to provision of public goods, either as outcome of discriminatory practices or due to historical antecedents, such as the caste and religious divides in India. In several districts of West Bengal in India concentration of religious minorities, namely Muslims is higher than state and country-level averages. We measures access to public goods in rural West Bengal for different strata of minority concentration. Using Least Square, Generalized Linear Models and Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, we find evidence of strong horizontal inequality against Muslims in terms of access to public goods. Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition shows that Muslims in larger concentrations face poorer access to infrastructure, health and transport facilities.religious minorities, public good, discrimination, welfare, West Bengal

Firm Investment & Credit Constraints in India, 1997 – 2006: A stochastic frontier approach

We use the stochastic frontier approach to estimate the impact of firm characteristics on investment decisions of Indian firms during the 1997-2006 period. The use of the stochastic frontier approach allows us to define the (unobserved) optimum investment that is consistent with a firm‟s characteristics such as the Tobin‟s q during each firm-year, and then estimate the deviation from this unobserved optimum in the form of an (investment) efficiency score that varies between zero and one. This deviation is interpreted as the degree of credit constraint, and we are also able to estimate the impact of firm characteristics such as leverage and business group affiliation on the degree of credit constraint via their marginal effects. Our results suggest that the degree of credit constraint of an average firm increased over time during the sample period, despite significant reforms of the Indian banking sector by the turn of the century. We also find that the degree of credit constraint decreases with cash flow and assets, which is consistent with the available literature. Further, there is a threshold effect of leverage, and the degree of credit constraint is greater for highly leveraged firms. Finally, we find that the beneficial impact of business group affiliation on the degree of credit constraint decreases over time, and is eliminated by the end of the sample period.Investment, Credit rationing, Imperfect information, Stochastic frontier analysis

Asymptotic Distribution of Restricted Canonical Correlations and Relevant Resampling Methods

As restricted canonical correlation with a nonnegativity condition on the coefficients depend only on the covariance matrix, their sample counterparts can be obtained from the sample covariance matrix. For such estimators, asymptotic normality results are established, and the role of resampling methods in this context is critically examined. The effectiveness of the usual jackknife and bootstrap methods is studied analytically, and the findings are supplemented by numerical studies

Fundamentals, financial factors and firm investment in India: A Panel VAR approach

This study analyses the role of fundamentals and financial factors in determining firm investment in India with imperfect capital market in a panel VAR framework. Previous research in this area is based on the test of significance (or some variant of this) of the cash flow variable in the investment equation. In this strand of research, cash flow is considered to be a financial factor. The major theoretical problem of this approach is that in a forward-looking model cash flow might be correlated to fundamental variable(s) of a firm. Because in a forward looking model, current cash flow of a firm also incorporates expectation of fundamentals. There is a problem of disaggregating the fundamental effect of cash flow from the finance effect. Thus, a statistically significant cash flow may not imply that financial market imperfections determine investment. This could be resolved in a VAR framework as it uses a simultaneous equations model. An econometric model is formulated with the joint determination of investment, marginal profit (marginal with respect to capital stock), cash flow and balance sheet variables. The latter captures financial market imperfections while cash flow is modelled to reflect both fundamental factors as well as financial market imperfections while marginal profit is a pure fundamental variable. Using VAR methodology with dynamic panel is a newer approach in the panel regressions. By suitable orthogonal decomposition (such as Choleski decomposition) of the shocks (to cash flow or to fundamental or financial variables)and then looking at the impulse responses one can understand the nature of dynamic adjustments of investment, fundamentals and financial factors

Fundamentals, financial factors and firm investment in India: A Panel VAR approach

This study analyses the role of fundamentals and financial factors in determining firm investment in India with imperfect capital market in a panel VAR framework. Previous research in this area is based on the test of significance (or some variant of this) of the cash flow variable in the investment equation. In this strand of research, cash flow is considered to be a financial factor. The major theoretical problem of this approach is that in a forward-looking model cash flow might be correlated to fundamental variable(s) of a firm. Because in a forward looking model, current cash flow of a firm also incorporates expectation of fundamentals. There is a problem of disaggregating the fundamental effect of cash flow from the finance effect. Thus, a statistically significant cash flow may not imply that financial market imperfections determine investment. This could be resolved in a VAR framework as it uses a simultaneous equations model. An econometric model is formulated with the joint determination of investment, marginal profit (marginal with respect to capital stock), cash flow and balance sheet variables. The latter captures financial market imperfections while cash flow is modelled to reflect both fundamental factors as well as financial market imperfections while marginal profit is a pure fundamental variable. Using VAR methodology with dynamic panel is a newer approach in the panel regressions. By suitable orthogonal decomposition (such as Choleski decomposition) of the shocks (to cash flow or to fundamental or financial variables)and then looking at the impulse responses one can understand the nature of dynamic adjustments of investment, fundamentals and financial factors

System Analysis and Design of Armament Integrated Management System

Proof and trial activity in a dynamic test range is a complex, sensitive, and herculean activity. It is a system comprising critical functions that accept various armament inputs and produces proof results as output, processing various critical data and sensitive activities in between. Automation of the existing system is a step for reliable, secure, smooth operation and easy maintainability of the system that makes it synchronized with the latest development of range technology. Understanding the flow of data through these functions requires extensive study to realize different inter-linked activities involved with the functions of this system. This paper presents the flow of activities in the automation of dynamic test range of Proof & Experimental Establishment through context level diagram, process flow diagram, data flow diagram, and entity-relationship diagram. Realization of armament integrated management system will be through resilient and high bandwidth network backbone which is a part of this paper. Cloud computing is the latest development in the information technology. This paper also analyses the appropriate model of cloud computing for porting the system in the cloud.Science Journal, Vol. 64, No. 6, November 2014, pp.524-529, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.64.811