When AAA Means B: The State of Credit Rating in India

As in many other countries, India five year old credit rating industry has grown rapidly amidst persistent doubts about the quality of the rating service. This paper evaluates the ratings given by India leading credit rating agency, CRISIL. We find that CRISIL ratings are not only too liberal by international standards but also internally inconsistent. We argue that to improve the quality of credit rating in India, there must be more competition; credit rating must be opened up to the private sector; and raters must provide unsolicited ratings.

Topological Excitations near the Local Critical Point in the Dissipative 2D XY model

The dissipative XY model in two spatial dimensions belongs to a new universality class of quantum critical phenomena with the remarkable property of the decoupling of the critical fluctuations in space and time. We have shown earlier that the quantum critical point is driven by proliferation in time of topological configurations that we termed warps. We show here that a warp may be regarded as a configuration of a monopoles surrounded symmetrically by anti-monopoles so that the total charge of the configuration is zero. Therefore the interaction with other warps is local in space. They however interact with other warps at the same spatial point logarithmically in time. As a function of dissipation warps unbind leading to a quantum phase transition. The critical fluctuations are momentum independent but have power law correlations in time

Research on the Indian Capital Market: A Review

In this paper we present a review of research done in the field of Indian capital markets during the fifteen years from 1977 to 1992. The research works included in the survey were identified by two search procedures. Firstly, we wrote to 118 Indian university departments and research institutions requesting information on the works done in this field in their department/institution. After three reminders, we obtained responses from 53 institutions. Simultaneously, we searched through various Indian journals in our library, located books listed in the library catalogue and traced through the list of references provided in various research works. Considering the size, vintage and development of the Indian capital market, the total volume of research on it appears to be woefully modest - about 0.1 unit of work per institution per year! Moreover, a large number of works are merely descriptive or prescriptive without rigorous analysis. Certain areas such as arbitrage pricing theory, option pricing theory, agency theory, and signalling theory are virtually unresearched in the Indian context. Besides, very little theoretical work has been done by researchers in India. However, with improved availability of databases and computing resources, and with increasing global interest in Indian markets, we expect an explosion of work in the near future.

Development of a process simulator using object oriented programming: Information modeling and program structure

Object Oriented Programming Languages (OOPL) offer the flexibility of language extension to the specific application of interest. The development effort required for process simulators can be greatly reduced if we extend OOPL with process simulator specific objects and use them for simulation. Design of objects is the most important aspect of development in using OOPL. But OOPL do not provide a methodology to aid in object design. The objects to be designed should reflect the nature of the application at hand.;The objective of this work is to develop an object oriented process simulator to illustrate the benefit of using OOPL in process simulation. An object design criteria is established, an analysis of the object model is performed, and a steady state process simulator using sequential and simultaneous approaches is developed using C++ as the underlying implementation language.;It is found that the object model has to be extended with operational behavior to effectively represent the process simulation information, the development effort is greatly reduced by using the object oriented approach for the process simulator, OOPL can act as common platforms for integrating process engineering activities, and C++ can be effectively used as an implementation language for object oriented process simulation.;Further work is necessary to extend the simulator with dynamic simulation capabilities and to make the simulator interactive and user friendly by developing a graphic interface

100% Solid Polyurethane the Innovative Technology for Corrosion Protection

100% solid polyurethane is the latest innovation in the field of anti corrosive coatings. It is internationally recognised for providing highest degree of protection to vital installations such as oil & gas pipelines, tanks, LPG mounded bullets and structures exposed to aggressi-vely corrosive environment encountered in buried underground conditions or exposed to seawater such as drilling platforms, coastal installations or plant and equipment in sewage / waste water treatment services. 100% solid polyurethane is a two component, solvent free, elastomeric, thermosetting coating compound, which is expected to preserve the integrity of structures over their design life. It is preferred over other traditional coating systems because of its outstanding life expec-tancy, resistance to aggressively corrosive environment, very high abrasion and impact resistance, strong adhesion to steel substrate, extremely fast curing capability, high film build characteristic and most importantly, compliance with rigorous regulations on volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions. In India, the concept of 100% solid polyurethane coating has come in only recently. Major oil and gas companies and reputed engineering consultants are now recommending its use to protect critical installations such as LPG moun-ded bullets, rehabilitation of old pipelines where conven-tional coating have failed, field joint of cross country pipelines, internal linings of intake water pipelines in power plants, equipment employed in waste water treatment plants etc. This paper discusses in depth the chemistry of 100% solid polyurethane, its properties & physical characteri-stics, equipment and application techniques as also its various advantages

Image filtering using the NTT convolver.

Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1984 .V377. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 40-07, page: . Thesis (M.A.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1984

Narasimham Committee Report - Some Further Ramifications and Suggestions

This paper while agreeing with the general thrust of the Narasimham Committee Report. Calls attention to some logical corollaries of the Report and analyses some possible fallout from implementing the Report. We agree with the view that control of banking system should be under an autonomous body supervised by the RBI. However at the level of individual banks, closer scrutiny of lending procedures may be called for than is envisaged in the Report. In a freely functioning capital market the potential of government bonds is enormous, but this necessitates restructuring of the government bond market. The government bonds may then also be used as suitable hedging mechanisms by introducing options and futures trading. We recommend freeing up the operation of pension and provident fund to enable at least partial investment of such funds in risky securities. In the corporate sector, we believe that the current 2:1 debt equity norm is too high and not sustainable in the long term. We envisage that high debt levels and higher interest rates, combined with higher business risk may result in greater incidence of corporate sickness. This may call for various schemes for retrenched workers and amendment to land laws for easy exit of companies. On account of interdependencies across different policies, any sequencing of their implementation may be highly problematic. We therefore suggest a near simultaneity in the implementation of various reforms in order to build up a momentum which would be irreversible if people are to have confidence that the reforms will endure, and if we are to retain our credibility with international financial institutions.