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This study aims to investigate the antecedents of social interaction among Indian retail investors and fund managers to understand how these factors influence investment decisions. By identifying and examining these antecedents, the study aims to shed light on the social dynamics that shape investment behavior in the Indian financial market.

The researchers have mainly adopted an interpretive strategy for the present study. Qualitative data elicited through semistructured interviews with six retail investors and two fund managers were subjected to qualitative thematic analysis.

Our research found several factors that make Indian retail investors and fund managers connect and make financial decisions. Peers can improve a person’s investing performance through social facilitation, and discussing investment suggestions and lessons learned can affect a group’s investment behavior. Social norms also influenced investors’ financial decisions, demonstrating compliance. Investor closeness increased information sharing. Finally, the fear of missing out (FOMO), a psychological phenomenon where people fear missing out on rewarding experiences, encouraged social engagement as investors sought appealing prospects.

The researchers interviewed eight carefully selected interviewees across the divide between retail investors and fund managers. Adopting other grouping criteria, conducting a focus group discussion with more respondents or adopting a mixed-methods approach may increase our understanding of the investment decision behaviors of Indian retail investors and fund managers.

The findings have far-reaching consequences, from deepening our knowledge of investors’ motivations and actions to directing individual savers, informing the development of financial literacy initiatives, influencing fund management practices and inspiring additional research in this study area.

This research, including retail investors and fund managers, significantly contributes to the literature on investment decisions and behavioral finance, particularly in the context of Indian investors and managers. This study’s unique perspective and comprehensive approach make it a valuable addition to the field, sparking interest and further exploration among academics, practitioners and investors alike.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between financial distress risk and stock returns in the Indian context.

This is an empirical study wherein the Altman-Z score is used to identify the distressed and the non-distressed firms listed on Nifty 500. The author uses the Fama–French five-factor model to study the relationship between stock returns and distress risk. The study analyses the differences in the factor loadings among the portfolios sorted by distress. It evaluates if incorporating distress risk factors in conventional pricing models enhances the goodness of fit.

The study reported a positive relationship between the distress risk factor and stock returns in the distressed portfolios, signifying that distress risk is a systematic risk only for distressed portfolios. Furthermore, after including the financial distress risk premium, the observed fluctuations in the small-minus-big (SMB), high-minus-low (HML), RMW and CMA coefficients indicate a common association with distress risk-related information.

This study tests the Fama–French five factors for distress risk and examines its nature in asset pricing for emerging markets like India. The study examined the performance of the augmented Fama–French five-factor model across different sets of portfolios sorted based on distress.

The present study deals with the growth performance of export (X), ­import (M), and economic growth (Y) in India over the period 1970–1971 to 2016–2017 as well as tariff (TR) for the period 1990–2017 by employing the methodology of one-time endogenous structural break suggested by Zivot and Andrews (1992). Also, an attempt has been taken to examine the direction of causality between the above-mentioned trade-related variables and economic growth using Granger Causality Test. Results of estimation reveal that all the variables converge toward a stationarity process having constant variability overtime. There exists structural break in the year 1996, 2006, 2008, and 2010, respectively, for economic growth, tariff, imports, and exports. Bidirectional causality is found running from economic growth to tariff and from tariff to economic growth. But there is unidirectional causality from imports to tariff, imports to exports and from exports to tariff.

Achieving tenure security is a global challenge impacting cities of the global south. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the role of technology-enabled solutions as an enabler for the tenure rights of slum dwellers.

In this paper, we adopted a case study approach to analyze the use cases for technologies aiding India’s securitization of land tenure. The flagship state mission of Odisha, named the Jaga Mission, and that of Punjab, named BASERA – the Chief Minister’s Slum Development Program – were used as cases for this paper.

It was found that technologies like drone imagery and digital surveys fast-tracked the data collection and helped in mapping the slums with accuracy, mitigating human errors arising during measurement – a necessary condition for ensuring de jure tenure security. The adoption of a technology-based solution, along with a suitable policy and legal framework, has helped in the distribution of secure land titles to the slum dwellers in these states.

Odisha’s and Punjab’s journey in using technology to enable tenure security for its urban poor residents can serve as a model for the cities of the global south, dealing with the challenges of providing secure tenure and property rights.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the creation and sharing of information by Bangladeshi women participants in a community informatics project and to assess to what extent the information provided to them meets their short and longer-term needs.

The analysis is based on data collected during a workshop with village women in Dhaka and focus group discussions in rural Bangladesh in March and April 2019. The information continuum model is used as a framework to analyse the data.

The study shows that the women document their learning and share it with their families and communities and that they are very conscious of the importance of keeping analogue back-ups of the information provided to them in digital format. They use notebooks to write down information that they find useful and they copy information provided to them on brown paper sheets hung in the village community houses.

This paper raises questions about how information is communicated to village women, organised and integrated in a community informatics project, and more generally about the suitability and sustainability of providing information in digital formats in a developing country.

The paper shows how village women participants in a community informatics project in Bangladesh took the initiative to create and preserve the information that was useful to them in analogue formats to remedy the limitations of the digital formats and to keep the information accessible in the longer term.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the exploration of women farmers' information literacy (IL) in the context of rural Bangladesh within the context of an ICT-based women empowerment project.

This study uses thematic analysis of qualitative data collected during a culturally sensitive workshop on IL with a group of project participants.

The findings showed that women understood their information needs and where to find information, which indicates that participants had some basic IL skills. However, the online environment presented challenges for them to evaluate the quality of the information and its relevance to their daily activities. The cultural complexity of IL was observed with the rural women’s information practices affected by family patterns, community and religion, amongst other social factors. Collective practices are made highly evident by the women’s natural tendency to share phones and information and by the way information is maintained. While the collective practices are very useful in utilising information for daily needs, the downside is that women are potentially vulnerable to threats in an online environment when sharing confidential information.

This article shows that in the context of rural Bangladesh, women farmers’ information-seeking behaviour and practices of sharing and creating information are influenced by sociocultural characteristics. It describes how the women’s situational context of collectivity and power relations influence their ways of handling information.