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Tuberculosis (TB) continues to c-exist with humans despite many TB control programs and elimination strategies. This depicts that some barriers are not allowing achieving the desired results. The current study aims to focus on identification and ranking of such barriers to facilitate TB control programs in developing countries.

In the present study, 13 barriers that can influence success rate of TB elimination strategies have been recognized with an in-depth assessment of related literature and opinions of specialists from medical industry and academic world. The interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) techniques have been employed for the ranking of barriers.

Based on driving power of barriers, the study coined that underinvestment is a major barrier followed by poor implementation of government policies and programs, poverty and poor primary health care infrastructure.

The findings may guide healthcare service providers and researchers in analyzing the barriers and understanding the necessity of further advancements to decrease the count of already existing and incident cases.

Policy- and decision-makers may utilize the information on dependence and driving power of barriers for better planning and effective execution of TB control strategies.

Although a lot of literature is available on different barriers that are affecting success of TB strategies, the current study analyzes all the key barriers collectively for the prioritization of barriers.

Electricity savings from energy-efficient appliances (EEAs) may have a significant impact on reducing global warming. There are several barriers confronted by EEAs, which have lowered their acceptance rate. The current study aims to identify and highlight key barriers to strengthening domestic sector adoption of EEAs in developing countries.

In the current study, 13 barriers were discovered by an in-depth literature review and the judgement of experts as well. Further, integrated “interpretive structural modeling” (ISM) and “decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory” (DEMATEL) approaches are used to evaluate barriers. The ISM technique is implemented to categorize barriers into distinct hierarchy levels and “cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification” (MICMAC) analysis to divide barriers among four clusters “independent, linkage, dependent and autonomous.” Moreover, the DEMATEL methodology is applied to classify the barriers among cause and effect clusters.

The integrated ISM and DEMATEL approach suggests that the topmost influencing barriers to the acceptance of EEAs are the lack of Government policies and initiatives, lack of attractive loan financing and subsidized energy prices.

This study would help researchers, regulators, producers, policymakers and consumers to comprehend the need for additional developments and understand that the adoption of EEAs is a current need. Overall, the results of this study expedite stakeholders with the key barriers that may assist to enhance the acceptance of EEAs within the domestic sector.

An extensive literature survey showed a dearth of studies for the identification, modeling and analysis of barriers collectively. Therefore, the current work used the ISM and DEMATEL approaches to fill the gap and to provide more comprehensive knowledge on barriers related to the acceptance of EEA.

Catering business is one of the most prominent and sought-after business investment in Dehradun, given the number of people who have a busy lifestyle. This fact gets more influential as Shugan Group is a catering company that serves the Dehradun market, a valley in the foothills of Shivalik Mountain Range in the state of Uttarakhand. Dehradun enjoys the benefit of being the Capital of Uttarakhand. The catering companies offer a lot of employment while promising delicious food to the stakeholders. Many individuals rely on this sector through food trucks, small shops or through full-fledged catering service providing companies. The group offers innovative and interesting food options for Doonites through their catering services including a lot of regional food options. Traditionally, the catering services in the town comprises handful options to deliver in the form of just food items. The catering services now involve a lot of service elements also including serving of the dishes, ambience and all inclusive of personnel factors. Many individuals assume that mess food is everyday kind of boring food. This assumption definitely holds true throughout the student community who are the major benefactors of the catering services as Dehradun is an education hub in the country. The new food offerings therefore face a lot of change as some of the ingredients definitely are the everyday incorporated ones. In the past couple of years, the catering services concept had gained acceptance for investment because of rise in demand for variety to be provisioned in the offerings as students hold diverse demographical differences. A lot of significance has been given to the likeness of various food options. Shugan Group wishes to inject a new life into the student catering market, leveraging the culinary skills of their handpicked chefs to develop creative new catering options. The advanced skills of chefs, industry insight of the group and an already existing market opportunity will allow the group to showcase its potential. Shugan Group is a start-up company. Marketing is critical to its success and future profitability. It offers creative gourmet for mess catering for a wide range of events and everyday eating options. The basic market need is high quality and creative food options. Having worked in the industry for the past few years and witnessing the dynamic environment including rise in disposable incomes, rise in consumer awareness, consumer’s keenness to eat new delicacies every day and desire to purchase quality food, the group has invested a lot in understanding what the consumers want. The performance of the group has been moderately incremental. After holding qualitative wisdom on the requirements of the market, Shugan Group is currently in the speculative stage in terms of being a caterer. The group wishes to reasonably understand the option that it should consciously adopt in terms of being modest about thinking only of financial benefit, with reasonable expansion every year only for the sake of being financially viable or build a strong brand and start getting people to increase word of mouth thereby bringing organic growth.

The authors analyze the relationship between exchange rate fluctuations of a number of major currencies and its impact on US stock market returns, as proxied by the S&P 500. Many studies have explored this topic since the early 1970s with varied results and with no evidence that clearly explains the relationship between exchange rates and stock market returns. This study takes a different look at this hypothesis and investigates the pairwise relationship between various exchange rates and the United States stock market returns (S&P 500 INDEX) from January 2000 to December 2019.

The authors test the data for unit roots using Phillip-Perron method. They use Johansen cointegration model to determine whether returns on S&P 500 are integrated with S&P 500. They use the VAR/VECM analysis to test whether there are any interdependencies between exchange rates and stock market return. Finally, they use various GARCH models, including the EGARCH and TGARCH models, to determine whether there exist volatility spillovers from exchange rate fluctuations in various markets to the volatility in the US stock market.

Using GARCH modeling, the authors find volatility in Australian dollar, Canadian dollar and the euro impact market return, and the volatility of Australian dollars and euro spills over to the volatility of S&P 500. They also find that the spillover is asymmetric for Australian dollars.

One of the limitations could be that the authors use different bivariate GARCH models rather than the MV-GARCH models. For future project(s), they plan to do this analysis from the perspective of a European Union or a British investor and use returns in those markets to see the impact of exchange rates on those markets. It would be interesting to know how the relationship will change during periods of financial crises. This could be achieved by employing structural break methodology.

Many studies have explored the relation between stock market returns and exchange rates since the early 1970s with varied results and with no evidence that clearly explains the relationship between exchange rates and stock market returns. This paper contributes by adding to the existing literature on impact of exchange rate on stock returns and by providing a detailed and different empirical analysis to support the results.

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain determining factors of ownership concentration and institutional portfolio ownership in the listed firms of an emerging market during pre-crisis and post-crisis periods and find variations in determining factors between the two varying market conditions.

This paper considers 316 listed firms for the pre-crisis period and 408 firms for the post-crisis period, from the NIFTY-500. Pre-crisis period ranges from FY2000-01 to FY2007-08 and post-crisis period ranges from FY2009-10 to FY2016-17. Two-step GMM is utilized to test the hypotheses by controlling the unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity issues.

Higher investment and stock market growth leads to ownership dispersion in both the market conditions. Industry information asymmetry leads to dispersion in pre-crisis, while improves concentration in post-crisis phase. Firm size, legal environment and economic growth are found to be a positive determinant of institutional ownership irrespective of market conditions. Institutional investment proliferates with higher stock liquidity and PE ratio, while declines with augmented firm risk, current ratio and stock market turnover during post-crisis phase.

Policymakers should construct a robust legal environment and focus to improve economic conditions to boost institutional ownership. Corporate executives should concentrate to increase stock liquidity and earnings of the firms, and lower market risk to draw more institutional portfolio investments.

This study would enrich emerging governance literature since studies on the determining factors of ownership holdings are limited in the emerging world. It adds novelty by capturing two different market conditions such as pre-crisis and post-crisis phases to obtain the time-dependent and time-independent determinants. It adds uniqueness by considering the determinants of institutional ownership, which is scarce in ownership studies.

Agriculture insurance is the panacea for the farming community. Many policy interventions were implemented for stimulating agriculture insurance access to farmers in India. However, access to agriculture insurance constantly remained one of the major challenges to Indian policy planners. The goal of the present paper is to explore current policy interventions in the area of agriculture insurance in India.

The present paper reviews and analyzes the evidence literature through a content analysis method on development and performance analysis perspective of existing agriculture insurance schemes in India.

Agriculture insurance is a significant risk management policy, but this is not easily reachable to the majority of farmers in India. The government of India introduces a novel agriculture scheme every decade, but every crop insurance scheme was inconsistent and ineffective owing to operational defects. Agriculture insurance in India is still developing in terms of coverage, scope, and exposure, but farmers' dissatisfaction about agriculture insurance turned out to be a negative word of mouth. Insurance illiteracy and farmers' preference for agriculture relief payments are the main reasons for limited access to agriculture insurance. The current crop insurance schemes are improperly operated because of implementation issues at the state level.

This paper will be useful for researchers and academicians to analyze the past and present status of crop insurance in India.

The paper is the unique work of the authors as it has attempted to present India's journey with agriculture insurance. An effort is made in the present study to provide a comprehensive and holistic developmental and performance analysis perspective of agriculture insurance in India.

The article makes a modest attempt to explore the level of financial literacy (FL) amongst the farmers in India. An effort was also made to unearth the factors affecting such FL.

The study used secondary data on 11,030 farmers across various regions of India from the Financial Inclusion Insight Survey, 2017. Standard and Poor Global FL questions were used to measure the level of FL amongst the respondents. In addition to the appropriate statistical tools and techniques, the censored tobit regression model and generalized structural equation model were applied to explore the determinants of FL of the Indian farmers.

The outcome of the study indicated that the majority of Indian farmers are financially illiterate. The average FL score obtained by the sample farmers was found to be only 33%. The results of the study signaled significant regional variation in FL amongst the farmers across India. Apart from the regional variation in FL, farmer type, state-specific agricultural productivity, gender, marital status, age, educational attainment and financial inclusion were found to be the major determinants of the FL amongst the farmers.

Evaluation of FL amongst farmers is scanty in the literature in developed nations and especially in the context of emerging economies, like India. The authors tried to fill this gap by exploring FL and its determinants amongst Indian farmers. In addition to this, the study for the first time used a comprehensive and rich dataset of 11,030 Indian farmers while exploring the level of FL and its determinants.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of financial distress (FD) on investment-cash flow sensitivity (ICFS) of Indian firms.

The study uses the system generalized method of moments (GMM) technique to investigate the effect of FD on ICFS of Indian firms during the period from 2001 to 2019.

Using FD measures like Ohlson's bankruptcy method, Altman's Z-score model and financial-distress ratio, the researchers find that FD increases ICFS and negatively affects corporate investment. The researchers’ findings explain that FD increases restrictions on external financing, which makes cash flow more important for corporate investment. Additionally, the researchers find that the effects of FD on ICFS are weak (strong) for bigger and group affiliated (smaller and standalone) firms. The study’s findings are robust to several measures of FD, group affiliation and firm size.

First, the researchers find that FD affects the ICFS, therefore, financially distressed firms should have sufficient internal funds or external funds for investment. Second, lending agencies should also consider the firms' FD condition before providing funds to secure their money. Third, investors should be very careful while investing in a financially distressed firm as we find that financially distressed firms face a decline in their investment which might reduce firm profitability.

This study contributes to the existing literature by providing empirical evidence by analyzing the impact of FD on ICFS in the context of India. As per the authors’ knowledge, this is the first-ever attempt to examine the effect of FD on ICFS.

While rapid increase in demand for foods but limited availability of croplands has forced to adopt input-intensive farming practices to increase yield, there are serious long-term ecological implications including degradation of biodiversity. It is increasingly recognised that ensuring agricultural sustainability under the changing climatic conditions requires a change in the production system along with necessary policies and institutional arrangements. In this context, this chapter examines if climate-smart agriculture (CSA) can facilitate adaptation and mitigation practices by improving resource utilisation efficiency in India. Such an attempt has special significance as the existing studies have very limited discussions on three main aspects, viz., resource productivity, adaptation practices and mitigation strategies in a comprehensive manner. Based on insights from the existing studies, this chapter points out that CSA can potentially make significant contribution to enhancing resource productivity, adaptation practices, mitigation strategies and food security, especially among the land-constrained farmers who are highly prone to environmental shocks. In this connection, staggered trench irrigation structure has facilitated rainwater harvesting, local irrigation and livelihood generation in West Bengal. However, it is necessary to revisit the existing approaches to promotion of CSA and dissemination of information on the design of local adaptation strategies. This chapter also proposes a change in the food system from climate-sensitive to CSA through integration of technologies, institutions and policies.