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Though Indian economy since 1980s has expanded very rapidly, yet the benefits of growth remain very unequally distributed. The purpose of this paper is to provide new evidence about the shape, intensity and decomposition of inequality change between 2005 and 2012. The authors find that Gini, as a measure of income inequality, has increased irrespective of geographic regions.

Based on a recent distribution analysis tool, “ABG,” the paper focuses on local inequality, and summarizes the shape of inequality in terms of three inequality parameters (α, β and γ) to examine how the income distributions have changed over time. Here, the central coefficient (α) measures inequality at the median level, with adjustment parameters at the top (β) and bottom (γ).

The results reveal that at the middle of distribution (α), there is almost the same inequality in both the periods, but the coefficients on the curvature parameters β and γ show that there is increasing inequality in the subsequent period. Finally, an analysis of decomposition of inequality change suggests that though income growth was progressive, however, this equalizing effect was more than offset by the disequalizing effect of income reranking.

This paper shows how it can be possible both for “the poor” to fare badly relatively to “the rich” and for income growth to be pro-poor.

This paper stresses the significance of inequality reduction.

Inequality reduction is very much imperative in ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity.

Perhaps, this research work is first of its kind to examine the shape and decomposition of change in income inequality in India in recent years.

Price discovery and spillover effect are prominent indicators in the commodity futures market to protect the interest of consumers, farmers and to hedge sharp price fluctuations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate empirically the price discovery and volatility spillover in Indian agriculture spot and futures commodity markets.

This study uses Granger causality, vector error correction model (VECM) and exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (EGARCH) to examines the price discovery and spillover effects for nine most liquid agricultural commodities in spot and futures markets traded on National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX).

The VECM results show that price discovery exists in all the nine commodities with futures market leading the spot in case of six commodities, namely soybean seed, coriander, turmeric, castor seed, guar seed and chana. Whereas in case of three commodities (cotton seed, rape mustard seed and jeera), price discovery takes place in the spot market. The Granger causality tests indicate that futures markets have stronger ability to predict spot prices. Supporting these, the results from EGARCH volatility test reveal that there exist mutual spillover effects on futures and spot markets. Thus, it could be inferred that futures market is more efficient in price discovery of agricultural commodities in India.

These results can help the market participants to benefit by hedging out the uncertainty and the policymakers to design futures contracts to improve the efficiency of the agricultural commodity derivatives market.

The findings provide fresh view on lead–lag relationship between future and spot prices using the latest data confirming that futures market indeed is dominant in price discovery.

There are very few studies that have explored the efficiency of the agricultural commodity spot and futures markets in India using both price discovery and volatility spillover in a detailed manner, especially at the individual agriculture commodity level.

Determining the relevant information using financial measures is of great interest for various stakeholders to analyze the performance of the firm. This paper aims at identifying these financial measures (ratios) which critically affect the firm performance. The authors specifically focus on discovering the most prominent ratios using a two-step process. First, the authors use an exploratory factor analysis to identify the underlying dimensions of these ratios, followed by predictive modeling techniques to identify the potential relationship between measures and performance.

The study uses data of 25 financial variables for a sample of 1923 Indian manufacturing firms which exist continuously between 2011 and 2018. For prediction models, four popular decision tree algorithms [Chi-squared automatic interaction detector (CHAID), classification and regression trees (C&RT), C5.0 and quick, unbiased, efficient statistical tree (QUEST)] were investigated, and the information fusion-based sensitivity analyses were performed to identify the relative importance of these input measures.

Results show that C5.0 and CHAID algorithms produced the best predictive results. The fusion sensitivity results find that net profit margin and total assets turnover rate are the most critical factors determining the firm performance in an Indian manufacturing context. These findings may enable managers in their decision-making process and also have vital implications for investors in assessing the performance of the firm.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current paper is the first to address the application of decision tree algorithms to predict the performance of manufacturing firms in an emerging economy such as India, with the latest data. This practical perspective helps the organizations in managing the critical parameters for the firm’s growth.

This article attempts to understand the pattern of credit (loan) among agricultural households and identify the correlates of their access to institutional credit for policy imperatives. It also focuses on the inclusivity of institutional credit and debt pattern in terms of outstanding loan in the southern region of India.

This study employs the Tobit model along with the Heckman selection model to study the impact of various factors on the institutional borrowing and the amount outstanding.

The findings reveal that the access to credit is strongly associated with the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of agricultural households in South India. Asset position of households and size of holding are positively related with the probability of household having access to institutional credit. Education and family size are also found to be associated with higher access to formal credit. On the other hand, the socially disadvantaged households have lower access to formal credit. Similarly, other variables – assets, holding size and education – are associated with higher credit per household.

The findings indicate that the strategies to develop agriculture in southern India must encompass efforts to bring the small and marginal farmers under the coverage of institutional credit.

There are very few studies that have explored the credit access in South India from the perspective of land class despite the government’s attempts to include small and marginal farmers in the ambit of formal financial services.

The preference of firm corporate social responsibility (CSR) spending is shaped by different groups of owners and the institutional environment in which the firm operates. This paper aims to study the heterogeneity among the controlling groups and firms’ internationalization in influencing the CSR decision in emerging economy firms.

This paper draws understanding from institutional theory to inspect the propensities of various ownership groups such as lending institutions (LI), domestic mutual funds (MF) and foreign institutional investors (FIIs). The empirical analysis was conducted from a sample of 1,594 unique Bombay stock exchange (BSE)-listed non-financial Indian firms during the 2014–2019 period using Tobit panel regression analysis.

The findings reveal that firms’ CSR activities are impacted differently by ownership share of different types of institutional investors after controlling for firm-level resources and capabilities. Lending institutions, FIIs and MF are supportive of CSR investments by firms along with international investments by the firm. Further, the results show that the CSR spend is positively influenced by the business group affiliation of the firm compared to the unaffiliated group of firms.

The analysis has implications for both institutional investors and multinational firms. In the merging market context, managers and owners who target long term strategies such as CSR will benefit from increasing shareholdings of creditors (lending institutions). They can also take steps to improve their transparency and corporate governance structure so as to attract foreign institutional investments, thus, in turn, helping the internationalization process of the firm.

This paper considers the role of the diverseness of the ownership institutional investors along with the moderating effect of business group affiliation of the firm and international investments in impacting the CSR spend. This disparity has not been previously studied with the latest data in an emerging economy context.

The objective of the study is to analyse the impact of research and development investment on the firm performance of “small” scale firms vis-a-vis “medium”-scale firms.

The dataset comprised of a balanced panel of 486 research and development conducting Indian manufacturing small and medium enterprises, constructed for the period of 2006–2017. Fixed Effects, Random Effects Model and Hausmann test were used to analyse the determinants of firm performance in manufacturing small and medium enterprises in India.

It was found that from firms’ research and development (R&D) investments in terms of performance could be attained if simultaneously internationalisation and higher capital intensity could be achieved.

Managers could pay specific attention to the antecedents of firm performance and calibrate their R&D investment, internationalisation efforts and capital intensity simultaneously to achieve higher growth and productivity. For policymakers, the results provide an insight into how the firms in both categories could be differently incentivised, such that resources are better utilised.

The study analysed the determinants of firm performance in small and medium-sized firms at a disaggregate level as well as at a sectoral level using fixed effects, random effects and lagged effects to arrive at novel results, which have important implications for their competitiveness.

The phenomenon known as financialization of commodities, arising from the speculation in commodity derivatives market, has raised serious concerns in the recent past. This has prompted distortion in agricultural commodity prices driving them away from rational levels of supply and demand shocks. In the backdrop of financialized commodities leading to increase in price of agricultural products and their interaction with equity markets, the authors examine the investment of institutional investors in impacting the agricultural returns. The paper aims to focus on the financial mechanism that drives extreme values and the mean of agricultural returns.

The authors employ the Threshold AutoRegressive Quantile (TQAR) methodology to find evidence of linkages between the Indian agricultural and equity markets from January 2010 to May 2020 consistent with the rise in inflows of institutional investors in agricultural markets.

The results reveal that the investors impact the agricultural commodity markets strongly when the composite commodity index value (COMDEX) is low. Additionally, in the lower extreme quantiles (0.25) of agricultural returns, the integration between the equity index and agricultural returns is found to be highly significant compared to insignificant values in the higher quantiles (0.75 and 0.95) in both the regimes. The results suggest that low values of agricultural commodities are more closely linked to equity indices when composite commodity index value is low. This implies that, at the lower quantiles of COMDEX return (bad day), the investors move to the stock market. In that way, the commodity index returns are seen to be as a strong channel for the financialization of Indian agricultural commodities and suggesting potential involvement of investors during those regime.

Regulators need to anticipate the price fluctuations in spot and futures markets. Investors in commodity markets need to strengthen risk awareness to carry out portfolio strategies.

From policy perspective, it is of pivotal importance to enhance the understanding of the financialization of agricultural products. The findings provide reference measures to stabilize the commodity markets, alleviate price distortions and carry out further evidence of price discovery and risk management in Indian commodity markets.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to highlight the potential influence of financial markets on the financialization of agricultural commodities in an emerging economy like India.

The preference of firm internationalization is shaped by different groups of owners and the institutional environment in which the firm operates. Past studies have largely ignored the heterogeneity among the controlling groups in influencing the internationalization decision in emerging economy firms.

In this study, the authors draw understanding from behavioral risk perspective and institutional theory to inspect the risk perceptions and propensities of various ownership groups such as lending institutions, domestic mutual funds and foreign institutional investors (FIIs). Empirical analysis was conducted from a sample of 2695 unique BSE-listed nonfinancial Indian firms during 2005−2019 period using Tobit panel regression analysis.

The findings reveal that firms' international investments are impacted differently by ownership share of different types of institutional investors after controlling for firm-level resources and capabilities. While lending institutions and FIIs are supportive of foreign investments by firms, domestic mutual funds are not supportive of this strategic decision on foreign investment.

Further, our results show that family ownership, measured in terms of family shareholding, negatively moderates the lending institutions toward internationalization and does not impact the FIIs and mutual fund investor's decision regarding the foreign investments.

To the best of the author's knowledge, the current paper is the first to address the risk perceptions of various ownership groups on firm's international outlook in an emerging economy context with the latest data. This practical perspective helps the organizations in managing the ownership holdings.

The study aims to analyze the impact of Research & Development (R&D) intensity on the firm’s performance, measured by growth of sales in the emerging market like India. Innovation strategy and its outcomes for firms may be different in developing countries as compared to developed countries. Thus, a study that focuses on the emerging economy like India, with a majority of the population dependent on agriculture, is of prime importance to the firm performance in the food and agricultural manufacturing industry. For this study, the broader focus will be on one widely recognised factor which may influence the growth rate of firms, i.e. investment in innovations which is in terms of R&D expenditure.

The paper investigates the relationship between the R&D efforts and growth of firms in the Indian food and agricultural manufacturing industry during 2001–2019. To empirically test the relationship between firm’s growth (FG) and R&D investments, system generalised method of moments technique has been used, hence enabling to avoid problems related to endogeneity and simultaneity.

The findings reveal that investments in innovations have a positive effect on the growth of firms in the Indian food and agricultural manufacturing industry. Investment in R&D also enables the firms to reap benefits from externalities present in the industry. Further analysis reveals that younger firms grow faster when they invest in R&D. More specifically, this paper finds evidence in the case of the food and agricultural industry that import of raw materials negatively affects the FG and export intensity positively affects the growth in the case of R&D firms.

This study suggests that the government should encourage the industries to invest optimally in R&D projects by providing favourable fiscal treatments and R&D subsidies which are observed to have positive effects in various developed countries.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, the current paper is the first to analyse the impact of innovation in food and agricultural industry on firm’s performance in an emerging economy context with the latest data. This paper agrees that a government initiative to increase private R&D expenditure would have favourable effects on FG as growing investments in R&D lead to further growth of the firms.

Market efficiency leads to transparent and fair price discovery of commodity markets, thus enhancing the value chain for competitive benefit. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the market efficiency of Indian agricultural commodities at spot, futures and mandi markets apart from exploring price risk management in these markets.

This study uses Johansen co-integration, vector error correction model and granger causality for analyzing market efficiency of the nine most liquid agricultural commodities across three markets, namely, spot, futures and mandi. All these nine commodities are traded on National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange.

The statistical results indicate price discovery exists in the mandi market and spot market leading to futures prices. Mandi price returns are seen to negatively influence futures returns in the case of cotton seed, guar seed and spot returns in the case of jeera, coriander and chana. For castor seed, the three markets are seen to have no long run relationship. The results of Granger causality reveal short run relationship between all the three markets in the case of soybean seed and coriander. In these commodities, prices in all three markets are capable of predicting the prices in the other markets. For the case of cottonseed, Rape Mustard seed, jeera, guar seed, the results indicate unidirectional causality between the mandi markets and the other two markets.

These results shall facilitate policymakers to explore intervention through integrated agri-platform (IAP) in price discovery and market efficiency.

The results of this study are useful in understanding the price discovery of mandi markets and its role in the spot and futures market. Agricultural commodities price discovery depends upon the integration of all these three markets. Introduction of IAP as described in the paper shall facilitate price risk management apart from improving the efficiency of price discovery.

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study considering mandi, spot and futures prices in the price discovery process in India. In addition, this study found the role of mandi markets in serving the economic function of price discovery and price risk management. Hence, suggests for policy intervention for Indian agricultural commodities to manage price risk.