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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between financial development and rural-urban income inequality (INQ) in South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries using panel data from 1986-2012.

The stationarity properties are checked by the LLC and IPS panel unit root tests. The paper applied the Pedroni’s panel co-integration test to examine the existence of the long-run relationship and coefficients of co-integration are examined by fully modified ordinary least squares. The short-term and long-run causality is examined by panel Granger causality.

The results of Pedroni co-integration test indicate that there exists a long-run relationship among the variables. The findings suggest that financial development increases rural-urban inequality whereas trade openness reduces rural-urban inequality. The empirical results of panel Granger causality indicate evidence of short-run causality confirms that economic growth and financial development causes rural-urban INQ.

The present study recommends for appropriate economic and financial reforms focusing on financial inclusion to reduce rural-urban INQ in SAARC countries. Financial policies geared toward agriculture and rural population should be adopted to reduce the prevailing rural-urban INQ in SAARC region.

Till date, there is hardly any study exploring the causal relationship between financial development and rural-urban INQ for SAARC countries by using panel co-integration and causality techniques. So the contribution of the paper is to fill these research gaps in the literature.

The paper aims to investigate the influence of the angle of inclination on mixed convection heat transfer from rectangular plated shrouded fin array computationally. This study has got applications in the various thermal field such as cooling, solar thermal and so on.

A computational study is made to evaluate the thermal performance in an inclined channel.

Increase in clearance from 0.01 to 0.25 results in an increase of local Nusselt number by is as high as 15% near the exit. At a higher value of Gr with an increase in C* from 0.10, Nu is found to increase by 5.5%. Increase in Gr by 1.37 times results in enhancement of Nu by a maximum of 25-30%. Around 10% increase in overall Nu value is observed with an increase in inclination (i.e. from 30° to 60°).

This study has got applications in the various thermal field such as cooling, solar thermal and so on.

Entry region mixed convection in a shrouded inclined finned channel is performed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possible co-integration and the direction of causality between financial development and economic growth in South-Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries using annual data from 1994 to 2013.

The Carrion-i-Silvestre et al. (2005) stationarity test with structural breaks is used to check the stationarity. The Westerlund (2006) panel co-integration test is employed to examine the long-run relationship among the variables. To carry out tests on the co-integrating vectors, fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and PDOLS techniques are used and panel Granger causality test is used to examine the direction of the causality.

The Westerlund (2006) panel co-integration test confirms the existence of the long-run relationship between financial development and economic growth for SAARC countries. The coefficients of FMOLS and DOLS indicate that index of financial development (IFD) and trade openness supports economic growth in SAARC region. In the short-run, there is unidirectional causality running from IFD to economic growth.

In the view of these findings it is recommended that countries in the region should adopt policies geared toward financial sector development to attain high economic growth.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, no studies have looked into SAARC countries to study the relationship between financial development and economic growth, this study is the first of its kind.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between financial development indicators and human capital for Asian countries using the annual data from 1984-2013.

The stationarity of the variables are checked by Levin-Lin-Chu, Im-Pesaran-Shin, Fisher-type augmented Dickey-Fuller and Philips-Perron panel unit-root tests. The Pedroni’s and Kao’s panel co-integration approaches are employed to examine the long-run relationship among the variables. To estimate the coefficients of co-integrating vectors, both panel dynamic ordinary least squares (PDOLS) and fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) techniques are used. The short-term and long-run causality is examined by panel granger causality.

The Pedroni’s and Kao’s co-integration approaches support the existence of the long-run relationship among the indicators of financial development, economic growth and human capital. The PDOLS and FMOLS estimators revealed that both financial development indicators and economic growth variable act as an important driver for the increase in human capital. The results of panel granger causality indicate that causality runs from indicators of financial development, economic growth and public spending on education to human capital.

There is hardly any study that examine the impact of financial development indicators and economic growth on human capital in Asian economies, therefore the present study fill the research gap in the literature.

This study examines the heterogeneous relationship between ad-hoc support policies, high government payments, low interest rates and farm debt use across farms of different sizes and across farm operators of different races, genders and experiences to inform the 2024 Farm Bill discussions.

Utilizing USDA’s Agricultural Resource Management Survey data for 2020 and 2021, this study characterizes the differences in short-term farm debt use and the amount of short-term debt during the COVID-19 pandemic period across several farm and farmer types using double selection LASSO and regression analysis.

Results show positive associations between government payments and debt use for all farm types and farmer demographics except for residence farms and non-white farmers, which may be due to their limited access to credit. Findings also indicate that farms that could already access credit, like commercial farms, increased their short-term debt during the pandemic per the decrease in interest rates. Moreover, the 2018 Farm Bill extended certain commodity support and direct and guaranteed loan program participation provisions that were previously more closely restricted. Beginning farmers seemed more likely to use short-term debt in response to higher pandemic government payments than their more experienced counterparts.

The insights from this study are timely and useful for policymakers for designing and implementing programs related to the new 2024 Farm Bill.

One of the explanations for the results is that beginning farmers have been more likely to use debt than most other groups of operators, signaling the success of special credit provisions. Our results are relevant to making upcoming policies related to female and nonwhite farm and ranch operators.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between tourism sector development and poverty reduction in India using annual data from 1970 to 2018. The paper attempts to answer the critical question: Is tourism pro-poor in India?

Stationarity properties of the series are checked by using the ADF unit root test. The paper uses the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bound testing approach to cointegration to examine the existence of long-run relationships; error-correction mechanism for the short-run dynamics, and Granger non-causality test to test the direction of causality.

The cointegration test confirms a long-run relationship between tourism development and poverty reduction for India. The ARDL test results suggest that tourism development and economic growth reduces poverty in both the long run and the short run. Furthermore, inflation had a negative and significant short-run impact on the poverty reduction variable. The causality test confirms that there is a positive and unidirectional causality running from tourism development to poverty reduction confirming that tourism development is pro-poor in India.

This study implies that poverty in India can be reduced by tourism sector growth and price stability. For a fast-growing economy with respect to economic growth and tourism sector growth, this may have far-reaching implications toward inclusive growth in India.

This paper is the first of its kind to empirically examine the causal relationship between tourism sector development and poverty reduction in India using modern econometric techniques.

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of information and communication technology (ICT) diffusion in women empowerment and in fostering the process of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries using panel data from 2005 to 2020.

An ICT diffusion index was constructed using principal component analysis (PCA). Further, the study uses econometric techniques robust to cross-sectional dependence (CSD) which include Pesaran's CSD tests, second-generation unit root test, Pedroni, Kao, Westerlund cointegration test, FMOLS, DCCE, Driscoll–Kraay (DK) regression, and D&H causality tests.

ICT diffusion and economic growth have a significant and favorable impact on women's empowerment. However, fertility rates and trade openness harm women's empowerment. In addition, the causality test results depict a bidirectional causal relationship between ICT and women empowerment and between growth and women empowerment. In addition, unidirectional causality is detected between education and women's empowerment. Overall, the findings indicate that expanding ICT and bridging the digital divide, particularly among women, can be effective in achieving empowerment-related SDGs.

To date, there are hardly any studies in SAARC context that empirically evaluate the link between ICT, women empowerment, and the issue of sustainability in a unified framework. Therefore, this study is unique in terms of conceptualization and methodological robustness in this context. The study will benefit policymakers and regulatory bodies to formulate appropriate policies to empower women and thereby attain the SDGs by 2030.

The global financial crisis of 2008 emphasized the need for monetary policy authorities to have a more comprehensive view of the conditions prevailing in the economy before deciding their policy stance. The purpose of this paper is to outline the construction of a financial conditions index (FCI) and investigate the possible co-integrating relationship between the economic growth and FCI.

The study employs the PCA methodology, with appropriate augmentations to handle the unbalanced panel data-sets and constructs a FCI for India. It tests the growth-predicting power of FCI by applying the auto regressive distributed lags approach to co-integration and verifies if the FCI is co-integrated with real GDP growth. It also discusses construction of a financial development index (FDI) which tracks the financial markets through M3, market capitalization and credit amount to residents.

The constructed FCI has a quarterly frequency and is available starting 1998q2. The long-run coefficient of FCI while predicting the real GDP growth is significant at 10 percent. The results confirm that a more-broader index FCI outperforms a narrower index FDI in growth prediction.

By showing that FCI is a better growth predictor than FDI, the study establishes the importance of including the foreign exchange markets, bond markets and stock markets while summarizing the conditions in the economy. The authors hope that the FCI would be helpful to the monetary authorities in their policy decisions.

The paper adds to the few existing studies studies dealing with FCI for Indian economy and constructs a more comprehensive index which tracks multiple markets simultaneously. It also fills the gap in literature by evaluating the correlating relationship between FCI and economic growth.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of female human capital on economic growth in the Indian economy during 1970-2014.

The paper employs Ng-Perron unit root test to check the order of integration of the variables. The study also used ARDL-bounds testing approach and the unrestricted error-correction model to investigate co-integration in the long run and short run; Granger’s causality test to investigate the direction of the causality; and variance decomposition test to capture the influence of each variable on economic growth.

The study constructed a composite index for both male and female human capitals by taking education and health as a proxy for human capital. The empirical findings reveal that female human capital is significant and positively related to economic growth in both short run and long run, while male human capital is positive but insignificant to the economic growth; same is the case for physical capital, it implies that such investment regarding female human capital needs to be reinforced. Further, there is an evidence of a long-run causal relationship from female human capital, male human capital and physical capital to economic growth variable. The results of variance decomposition show the importance of the female human capital variable is increasing over the time and it exerts the largest influence in change in economic growth.

The empirical findings suggest that the Indian economy has to pay attention equally on the development of female human capital for short-run as well as long-run growth of the economy. This implies that the policy makers should divert more expenditure for developing support for female education and health.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to study the relationship between female human capital and economic growth in the context of the Indian economy.

Using time series data for the period 1982-2016, this study aims to explore the effect of globalization, institutional quality on economic performance for Indian economy by endogenizing financial development.

The stationarity properties of the variables are tested by Saikkonen and Lütkepohl unit root test, and the co-integration test proposed by Bayer–Hanck (2013) is used to check the long- and short-run relationship among the variables. The robustness is established by autoregressive distributed lag approach (ARDL), and the Granger causality test is used to assess the causal relationship among the variables.

The empirical findings indicate the existence of the co-integrating relationship among the variables, and the ARDL estimates reveal that both globalization and institutional quality act as important key drivers for India’s economic performance. However, the institutional quality does not affect the short-run economic growth.

The study finds that institutional quality and globalization index are crucial to accelerate economic performance. Therefore, policy efforts should be focused on the improvement of these indicators by offering protection of property rights, reduction in government corruption, reducing political instability, price stability and stable macroeconomic environment. This study recommends that policy should be geared toward development of financial sector, promotion of financial integration, which will create the environment for the efficient allocation of credit.

This study provides empirical support for the proposition that both globalization and institutional quality matter for India’s emerging economic growth by taking account of the structural break.