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This second installment of commentary regarding recent financial crises discusses market dislocations over the past year (the first installment focused on market conditions surrounding September 11, 2001). The authors describe the events, and the fundamental and technical forces, that contribute to the current conditions of illiquidity and increased equity, credit, interest rate, and spread volatility. They suggest that in the current environment, more prudent leverage of market participants has mitigated the contagion effects observed in 1998.

Assumptions regarding long‐term expected returns have significant implications for asset/liability management of financial institutions. This article questions the validity of common assumptions regarding long‐term expected returns that are employed by financial institutions, in particular insurance companies. Although this article directly addresses this issue in the context of the insurance industry, the discussion is relevant for all institutional investors in fixed income markets.

While interpreting violent market movements can potentially be illuminating, many experienced finance practitioners shy away from this exercise, having recognized the difficulty of this task. At the same time, the majority of them appears to have accepted the premise that supply‐and‐demand dislocations have emerged as increasingly influential forces driving fixed income markets. In both business‐as‐usual and catastrophic market environments, their impact on interest rates, credit spreads, and implied as well as realized volatilities rivals that of geopolitical events, economic fundamentals, and credit crises.

This article discusses credit migration of diversified loan pool securitizations, as evidenced by the ratings transitions of mortgage‐backed securities (MBS) and asset‐backed securities (ABS). The authors contrast the ratings (i.e., credit) stability of MBS and ABS relative to ratings migration of general obligation corporate credit. They also use holding period returns to compare the total return portfolios of MBS/ABS to portfolios of senior unsecured corporate obligations.

Since liberalization in the 1990s, India has witnessed a growth in the number of educated middle-class women in professions. However, there are few women in leadership positions and decision-making bodies. While the earlier notion of the ideal woman as homemaker has been replaced by one which idealizes women of substance, a woman’s role in the family continues to be pivotal and is even viewed as central in defining Indian culture. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how and to what extent gender inequalities are reproduced in the organizations employing educated professionals.

Based on the perspective that gender is socially constructed, this paper analyzes gender inequality in Indian organizations through semi-structured interviews of men and women scientists in two private pharmaceutical laboratories.

The findings show reproduction of a gendered normative order through two types of norms and practices: one, norms and practices that favor men and second, socio-cultural norms that devalue women in public spaces which help to maintain masculinity in the workplace. Although these practices might be found elsewhere in the world, the manner in which they are enacted reflects national cultural norms.

The paper highlights how various norms and practices enacted in the specific Indian socio-cultural context construct and maintain masculinity at workplace depriving opportunities to professional women which affect their rise to leadership positions.