Causal Nexus between Commodity Derivatives Market Reforms and Economic Growth – Evidence from Indian Agricultural Sector

This paper attempts to study the growth in agricultural commodity derivatives market and its impact on economic growth in India. Commodity forward market has witnessed radical changes since independence. Government of India formed many committees to review working of forward trading in the country. Prof. A D Shroff Committee was constituted to propose a bill on forward contracts and finally in December 1952 Forward Contracts (Regulation) Act, was enacted. Dantwalla committee was appointed in 1966 to assess the working of co-operative marketing system. The Khusro Committee in June 1980 gave recommendations to reintroduce commodity futures trading in most of the major commodities. In 1994 Prof K N Kabra committee gave recommendations for reopening of futures trading in major commodities. The committee also suggested the pepper and castor seed trading exchanges to upgrade their operations to the level of international futures markets. The impact of growth in agricultural commodity futures on agricultural GDP is test by taking last ten years quarterly data of aggregate traded agricultural commodity futures across major exchanges and economic growth as measured by the sectoral quarterly GDP has been taken for study. The time series stationarity of commodity trade volume and GDP quarterly data has been tested using Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) and Phillip Perron (PP) tests and confirmed that the data is stationary. Linear regression results confirm significant influence of agricultural commodity futures trading on agricultural GDP in India. Keywords: Forward market, Economic growth, Committees, stationarity test, linear regression JEL category: G23, G2

Sustainability and Efficiency of Micro Finance Institutions – Evidence from Selected Listed Companies in India

Financial inclusion means that delivering financial services to all needy people at an effective and efficient manner unconditionally, and at an affordable cost. Micro finance institutions are playing an imperative role in financial inclusion and societal development.  As part of financial inclusion it is envisaged that every person living in rural India should have access to finance.  Many micro finance institutions in India are striving towards this objective and are facing many challenges in providing finance for rural people. MFI are abstracted with the capital requirements and high NPA due to non collateral lending. It also involves high transactional cost. With the objective of serving the poor, MFI has to sustain them with profitability and expand their outreach. It is observed from the top five listed MFI in India, that the listed MFI has better capital adequacy ratio and financial performance as compared to non listed firms, and has enhanced outreach to rural Indians over the years. Keywords: Financial inclusion, Financial Performance, Sustainability, Capital Adequacy ratio JEL category: G23, G2

Digital India Towards Development of Agriculture and Rural Development: an Overview

It has been estimated that India would need nearly 300 million tones of food grains by 2030. In other words, by the year 2020, we may need about 122 million tones of rice, 102 million tones of wheat, 41million tones of coarse grains and 28 million tones of pulses, 143 million tones of milk. Information Technology and Digital India is involves electronic processing, storage and communication of information, where anything that can be represented in digital form is included in the term information. Macmillan dictionary of IT defines information technology as “the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a micro-electronics based combination of computing and telecommunications”. Everybody knows that agriculture is the mainstay of Indian economy. More than 55 percent of the country's populations still depend on agriculture. As of 2011, rural areas host 742 million or over 55 percent of population. About 55 percent of India's total workforce is rural. Indian agriculture has surpassed many obstacles and successfully moved from the status of being a self deficient country to a self sufficient one in food grains as well as in several other sectors of agriculture. But there are threats of this achievement being soon gaped down by the monstrous growth of population

Corporate Ownership and Stock Price Volatility: An Empirical Study

This paper investigates the relationship between the firm ownership structure and price volatility. Ownership structure consists of promoter holdings, public shareholdings, institutional and non institutional holdings. Selected 26 Information Technology firms sample was taken for the study and it is found that largest shareholder in this sector is promoter and promoter group, who hold more than 45% stake in the firm. Public shareholding is the second largest. Institutional and non institutional investors have less than 25% shareholdings. Volatility is measured using standard Deviation and GARCH (1,1) is used to check the volatility persistence. It is found that price volatility is not significantly influenced by the firm ownership structure. This agrees with the notion that the price volatility is largely influenced by external macro economic variables and speculative forces of the market and internal factors like leverage and ownership structure has no significant influence on stock price volatility. Keywords: Ownership structure, volatility, GARCH, Promoter holdings JEL category: G23, G2

Ownership Structure and Market Liquidity – Sectorial Evidence From India

A firm’s ownership consists of shares held by promoters, public, institutions and other bodies. Ownership concentration in fewer hands leads to amplified agency cost and information asymmetry and impinge on the firm’s performance and market liquidity. Given the large number of liquidity measures and methodologies employed both by practitioners and academic researchers, this paper examines the market liquidity using impact cost, turnover ratio and coefficient of elasticity of trading. Looking at the logic behind their construction, and how they relate to each other and its relation with constituents of firm’s ownership structure, this study also attempts to find the relationship between the ownership structure and liquidity indicators. NSE Banking index stocks were taken as the sample for the period from July 2013 to June 2014. It is observed that the market liquidity as measured by impact cost and turnover ratio is not influenced by promoter group holding, institutions shareholders and non institutions shareholders and it confirms the findings of Paul Brockman, Dennis Y. Chung, and Xuemin (Sterling) Yan (2009). However, promoter group holding and institutions shareholding are significant explanation variables for market liquidity as measured by coefficient of trading model. The granger causality test confirms that public shareholding granger cause coefficient of elasticity of trading. It also shows that there is no causal relationship between promoter group holding, public shareholding, institutions shareholding, non institutions shareholding, and impact cost and turnover ratios. Keywords: ownership structure, market liquidity, impact cost, granger causality

Studies on hardness and tensile testing of AlSi10Mg produced by selective laser melting

AlSi alloys have a wide range of applications in the Additive Manufacturing area, including automotive, aerospace, and residential industries. Despite their appealing mix of mechanical qualities, high heat conductivity, and low weight, they are more difficult to treat by Selective Laser Melting due to their high reflectivity and heat conductivity. In this work, samples were exposed to heat treatment at temperatures of 400°C, 500°C, and 550°C and an artificial ageing treatment for 180°C for 12h, to control the mechanical behaviour of selective-laser- melting (SLM)-produced AlSi10Mg alloys, after which material properties such as tensile strength and hardness were evaluated. The highest tensile and yield strengths are shown by the as-built SLM specimens, which have values of 432.45 and 322.76 MPa. On the other hand, the lowest tensile and yield strengths are shown by the solution heat-treated specimens, which have values of 168.11 and 90.52 MPa. Similar to as-built SLM specimens, the highest hardness value measured was 132.55Hv1.

Causal Nexus Between Ownership Structure And Stock Price Volatility – Evidence From Listed Service Sector Firms In India

This paper investigates the causal nexus between the pattern of ownership structure in Indian service sector companies and its stock price volatility. Ownership structure consists of promoter holdings, public shareholdings, institutional and non institutional holdings. Media and entertainment sector 16 listed firms sample was taken for the study and it is found that largest shareholder in this sector is promoters, who hold more than 58% stake in the firm. Public shareholding is the second largest. Institutional and non institutional investors have less than 25% shareholdings. Volatility is measured using standard Deviation and GARCH (1,1) is used to check the volatility persistence. It is found that price volatility is not significantly influenced by the firm ownership structure. This agrees with the notion that the price volatility is largely influenced by external macro economic variables and speculative forces of the market and internal factors like leverage and ownership structure has no significant influence on stock price volatility. Key Words: Ownership structure, volatility, GARCH, Promoter holdings JEL category: G23, G2