Foreign Direct Investment and Technology Spillovers: Evidence from The Indian Manufacturing Sector

During the recent period, we observe that many countries compete with each other to attract foreign investment. When MNCs invest in a host country, it is assumed that a part of their technology spills to the host country firms. But the empirical studies on spillover effects of FDI have failed to find robust empirical results about the possibility of positive spillover effects. This study is an attempt to empirically examine the spillover effects from the entry of foreign firms using firm level data of Indian manufacturing industries for the period 1994-2002. We consider both the horizontal and vertical spillover effects of FDI. Consistent with the findings of the previous studies, we find no evidence of significant horizontal spillover effects. In contrast, we find negative vertical spillover effects, although it is not statistically significant.Foreign Direct Investment, Horizontal Spillover, Vertical Spillover, Panel Data

Structural Changes in India's Stock Markets' Efficiency

This paper finds evidence that the Indian stock market has become weak-form efficient, off-late. We proceed by, first, locating structural breaks in the index using Bai-Perron's method for endogenous multiple structural changes. Four structural breaks are identified for the period 1991 to 2008 for the S&P CNX Nifty series -- December 1994, July 1999, June 2003 and January 2006. For this period the behaviour of returns approximates a Stable Paretian distribution. This would mean that the market risk will be beyond that can be predicted by measures build on the assumption of normality of returns. The property of infinite population variance of a stable paretian distribution makes variance based estimators redundant. Therefore, using non-parametric methods the paper tests the efficiency of the market across the periods of structural breaks. It is found that the markets have become weak-form efficient only since the second half of 2003, corresponding to the period of the third structural break.Efficient Markets Hypothesis; Indian Stock Market; Structural Break; Bai-Perron; Paretian Distribution; Runs test;

Does seasonality persists in Indian stock markets?

The 'conventional wisdom' about efficient markets is that there are little excess returns, relative to the market returns (and the level of risk) that one can make by analysing historical data. But researchers have gathered systematic evidence about markets violating this conventional wisdom. Some of these are calender effects, small-firm or size effect etc. This paper examines a calender effect known as `the-month-of-the-year-effect' and examine whether this much-hyped anomaly is a persisting feature in the Indian market. The paper shows that the previous evidence on seasonality could be the result of the very nature of parametric methods, that it gets influenced by extreme observations. Otherwise, seasonality is not a feature of the current Indian stock markets.financial market anomaly; stock market seasonality; month of the year effect; Indian stock market; January Effect

Structural Changes in India's Stock Markets' Efficiency

This paper finds evidence that the Indian stock market has become weak-form efficient, off-late. We proceed by, first, locating structural breaks in the index using Bai-Perron's method for endogenous multiple structural changes. Four structural breaks are identified for the period 1991 to 2008 for the S&P CNX Nifty series -- December 1994, July 1999, June 2003 and January 2006. For this period the behaviour of returns approximates a Stable Paretian distribution. This would mean that the market risk will be beyond that can be predicted by measures build on the assumption of normality of returns. The property of infinite population variance of a stable paretian distribution makes variance based estimators redundant. Therefore, using non-parametric methods the paper tests the efficiency of the market across the periods of structural breaks. It is found that the markets have become weak-form efficient only since the second half of 2003, corresponding to the period of the third structural break.Efficient Markets Hypothesis; Indian Stock Market; Structural Break; Bai-Perron; Paretian Distribution; Runs test;

Is Grass Greener on the Other Side?: A Glimpse of the Worker Camps in UAE

More than a million Indians work in UAE, and a third of them lives in worker camps. It is the expectation of higher wages that makes the ‘grass greener’ in UAE. But the wage differential, if it exists, does not seem to compensate for the living conditions in these camps. The article discusses the evidence from field study of living conditions in the worker-camps in UAE.UAE; Migration; Kerala; Worker Camps

Stock Market's Reaction to Monetary Policy Announcements in India

The paper examines stock market behaviour on days preceding and succeeding the announcement of a change in the monetary policy stance. Market's plausible reactions are tested using nonparametric statistics. The tests reveals that there is no systematic pattern in its reaction, neither towards the type of policy stance (expansionary or contractionary), nor during the days corresponding to the `event'.Monetary Policy; Stock Market; Event Study; Semi-strong Efficiency; EMH; Stock Market Efficiency; Non parametric; Indian Stock Market

Seasonal Dynamics of a Northern Minnesota Stream

Color poster with text, photographs, and graphs.Streams are dynamic ecosystems in which physical factors such as temperature, depth, and velocity change throughout the year. Benthic algae, which provide food for many invertebrates and form the base of many stream food chains, can respond to these factors. To understand how seasonal change influenced benthic algae, this study examined how algal abundance responded to variation in streambed temperature, current velocity and stream depth in early and late summer.University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Office of Research and Sponsored Programs

High-Rate Regenerating Codes Through Layering

In this paper, we provide explicit constructions for a class of exact-repair regenerating codes that possess a layered structure. These regenerating codes correspond to interior points on the storage-repair-bandwidth tradeoff, and compare very well in comparison to scheme that employs space-sharing between MSR and MBR codes. For the parameter set $(n,k,d=k)$ with $n < 2k-1$, we construct a class of codes with an auxiliary parameter $w$, referred to as canonical codes. With $w$ in the range $n-k < w < k$, these codes operate in the region between the MSR point and the MBR point, and perform significantly better than the space-sharing line. They only require a field size greater than $w+n-k$. For the case of $(n,n-1,n-1)$, canonical codes can also be shown to achieve an interior point on the line-segment joining the MSR point and the next point of slope-discontinuity on the storage-repair-bandwidth tradeoff. Thus we establish the existence of exact-repair codes on a point other than the MSR and the MBR point on the storage-repair-bandwidth tradeoff. We also construct layered regenerating codes for general parameter set $(n,k<d,k)$, which we refer to as non-canonical codes. These codes also perform significantly better than the space-sharing line, though they require a significantly higher field size. All the codes constructed in this paper are high-rate, can repair multiple node-failures and do not require any computation at the helper nodes. We also construct optimal codes with locality in which the local codes are layered regenerating codes.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figure

MNEs and Export Spillovers : An Analysis of Indian Manufacturing Industries

In the present study, we try to provide some empirical evidence for the export spillover effect examining the case of an emerging economy, namely India using firm level data for the period 1994-2006. We disentangle different spillover channels, namely export spillover, R&D spillover and wage spillover. We also consider the heterogeneous technological behaviour of local firms considering how in-house R&D efforts and disembodied technological imports may affect the overall exporting performance. Our findings mainly confirm that the two most important channels for export spillover are mainly the demonstration effect and the R&D spillover effect The decision to export is influenced mainly by technological activities of local firms, confirming that R&D is a key variable that help firms to overcome fixed costs that are crucial to start exporting. Moreover, the findings of the analysis suggest that local firms R&D is highly relevant to internalize the positive spillover effect emanating from MNEs both with regard to decision to export and export propensity.exports, FDI spillover, MNEs