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The understanding of the dissolution and corrosion behaviour of tin and lead in fluoboric acid solutions, is of technological interest as their fluoborate solutions are prepared by the dissolution of the individual metals in acid solutions. The cyclic polarization studies revealed the dissolution of these metals involve the chemical step involving BF₄^‐ ion preceding the second electron transfer as the slow step.

Many jurisdictions fine illegal cartels using penalty guidelines that presume an arbitrary 10% overcharge. This article surveys more than 700 published economic studies and judicial decisions that contain 2,041 quantitative estimates of overcharges of hard-core cartels. The primary findings are: (1) the median average long-run overcharge for all types of cartels over all time periods is 23.0%; (2) the mean average is at least 49%; (3) overcharges reached their zenith in 1891–1945 and have trended downward ever since; (4) 6% of the cartel episodes are zero; (5) median overcharges of international-membership cartels are 38% higher than those of domestic cartels; (6) convicted cartels are on average 19% more effective at raising prices as unpunished cartels; (7) bid-rigging conduct displays 25% lower markups than price-fixing cartels; (8) contemporary cartels targeted by class actions have higher overcharges; and (9) when cartels operate at peak effectiveness, price changes are 60–80% higher than the whole episode. Historical penalty guidelines aimed at optimally deterring cartels are likely to be too low.

The values and trends of the credit–deposit (C-D) ratio in countries and the states within them depend on several factors. Two such factors that the present study considers are the banks’ loanable funds locked under the heads of non-performing assets (NPA) and governments’ securities investments. Increases in the amounts of NPA and securities investments usually lead to a decrease in the allocations of bank credit to real investment purposes, such as industrial, service and agricultural activities and vice versa. On this background, this chapter examines the trends in bank credit in relation to the NPA and securities investments in the states of India and tries to find out the real cause of concern on the falling trends in the C-D ratio in the post-banking reform phase. We may now summarize that the falling C-D ratio or the rising quantity of flight of credit to the real sectors is closely associated with the banks’ investment of extra amount on securities over their statutory limits. This study finds that the NPA ratio at all-India levels is gradually declining while the investments on securities are increasing during the post-reform period. Such a craze behind this investment has an inevitable effect on the magnitude of credit delivery to the commodity-producing sectors. This means that the NPA threat is not a real threat to explain the downward trend of C-D ratio but the magnitude of security investments in both the central and state governments is a real threat and the downward trend of the C-D ratio is the result of this fact. Even though banks are safe in terms of their returns, the scenarios are not good for the rest of the economy as it creels their sustainability.

This article explores the use of a quality management model by a public sector agency to implement a socially responsible purchasing initiative related to minority diversity of the vendor pool. There is a description and discussion of the use of a quality management model for planning and implementing the initiative with a focus on changing organizational culture and reinforcing organizational policy priorities. The initial success of the initiative in increasing total contracted dollars to minorities suggests that a quality management implementation model is a useful approach for initiating a socially responsible policy within an organization.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of cost, revenue and profit efficiency on bank profitability in an emerging economy such as India over the period 1997 to 2017. Additionally, this study examines the effect of efficiency on profitability across different ownership groups for a panel of 70 Indian commercial banks.

In the first stage, using stochastic frontier analysis, we estimate the efficiency scores of cost, revenue and profit over the examined period. In the second stage, this study uses the two-step system generalized-method of moments dynamic panel approach to investigate the impact of several efficiency measures on bank profitability.

Results estimated through and system generalized-method of moments indicate that a higher level of cost, revenue and efficiency significantly improves India's bank profitability. Regarding ownership groups, this study finds that the public sector banks are most cost-efficient compared to private and foreign banks. Other bank-specific, macroeconomic and institutional variables have played a significant role in determining bank profitability.

The findings of the study extend some important policy implications. In light of the rapid decline in bank profitability, banks should focus on increasing the efficiency of their operations. Improvement in profit, cost and revenue efficiency can ameliorate bank performance significantly. Profit efficiency that takes into account both cost and revenue efficiency should be maintained reasonably to prevent the declining pattern of bank profitability that the industry has witnessed over the years.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this study is a fresh piece of research that fulfils an urgent need of investigating the dynamics between bank efficiency and bank profitability in India. In an emerging economy like India, where the banking sector has witnessed substantial structural transformations over the past two decades, such study demands an immediate empirical investigation.

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) offer governments an opportunity to access private capital and skills to build or upgrade, operate and manage public water infrastructure services hitherto provided and run by the public sector. Access to private finance speeds up the provision of public water services in developing countries, where many governments face budgetary constraints. However, the water sector attracts the least investment flows in developing countries, well below other infrastructure sectors. This paper aims to present the results of an investigation of critical success factors (CSFs) required for attracting the private sector in water supply projects.

A structured questionnaire survey of international PPP expert opinions was conducted.

Analysis results show that the CSFs for attracting the private sector to water PPPs include political commitment from elected leaders toward PPPs for water supply; existence of a dedicated PPP unit; strong and competent public water authority; adequate fiscal capacity of a national/subnational authority; public acceptance and support of involvement of the private sector in water services; a well-designed PPP contract; existence of enabling policy and legal frameworks to support water PPPs; and profitability of water supply project(s) to attract investors and lenders. Agreement analysis also indicates a strong to very strong agreement on the significance and rankings of the CSFs.

The research findings provide an insight into a number of important issues to enable greater private participation in water supply projects, most of which aim at reminding governments of some key areas that need reform and enabling greater commitment among them to undertake such reforms. Given the limited empirical research on CSFs for attracting private participation, this research makes a contribution to the body of knowledge about private involvement in the water sector of developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the extent of technical efficiency in 27 public sector banks operating in India and to provide strict ranking to these banks.

Two popular data envelopment analysis (DEA) models, namely, CCR model and Andersen and Petersen's super‐efficiency model, were utilized. The cross‐section data for the financial year 2004/2005 were used for obtaining technical efficiency scores.

The results show that only seven of the 27 banks are found to be efficient and thus, defined the efficient frontier; and technical efficiency scores range from 0.632 to 1, with an average of 0.885. Thus, Indian public sector banks, on an average, waste the inputs to the tune of 11.5 percent. Andhra Bank has been observed to be the most efficient bank followed closely by Corporation Bank. Further, the banks affiliated with SBI group turned out to be more efficient than the nationalized banks. The regression results incisively indicate that the exposure to off‐balance sheet activities, staff productivity, market share and size are the major determinants of the technical efficiency.

The practical implication of the research findings is that apart from the proportional reduction of all inputs equivalent to the amount of technical inefficiency, most of the inefficient public sector banks need to reduce the use of the physical capital and augment non‐interest income to project themselves on the efficient frontier.

This paper is the first to provide a strict ranking of Indian public sector banks on the basis of super‐efficiency scores.

This paper examines the technical efficiency (TE) of Indian commercial banks during 1998–2015.

This study uses mathematical programming-based data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology to measure technical efficiency of Indian banks. Further, Simar and Wilson (2007) double bootstrap procedure is applied to examine the determinants of efficiency of the Indian banks, by examining the effects of various bank specific and other contextual variables.

The results indicate substantial upward bias in the conventional efficiency estimates of the Indian commercial banks. Needless to note, such upward bias is consistent with the theoretical postulates. The bootstrapped regression results show that increasing capital adequacy ratio is positively associated with bank efficiency. The popular belief that non-performing assets have a dampening effect on performance of banks is validated. Among others, ownership category is observed to be an important determining factor of bank efficiency. Specifically, state-owned banks (SOBs) are relatively lagging behind the foreign banks. Moreover, larger banks are observed to have a significantly higher level of efficiency, therefore, recent official policy initiatives toward consolidation of SOBs are validated.

As this study uses Simar and Wilson (2007) bootstrap approach, it enables the authors to have an estimate of the extent of bias in the traditional DEA TE scores. It also helps us drawing consistent inferences by rectifying the problem of serial correlation in the conventional second stage regression in this regard.

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are viewed as a reform tool for resolving inefficiency and absence of dynamism in water supply delivery in developing countries. However, the requirements for their successful implementation have received very little attention. This paper aims to describe a set of critical success factors (CSFs) that, when given special and continual attention, would ensure a successful project implementation and to provide a predictive tool to aid implementers to evaluate the likelihood of a successful PPP water supply project.

Fourteen perceived CSFs were initially derived from project cases and extant literature, and verified through a two-round Delphi survey. Factor analysis established five critical success factor groups (CSFGs) that were then used to develop a fuzzy synthetic evaluation tool for assessing the chance of a successful project.

The five key CSFGs are commitment of partners, strength of consortium, asset quality and social support, political environment, and national PPP unit. The model output showed that, overall, these factors have a “very high” positive impact on a successful implementation of a water supply project. Hence, there is an excellent correlation between achievement of the CSFGs and project success. Success indices of individual principal factors are also “very high”.

The study presents a tool to public clients and private audience, and it is hoped that the study will trigger policy development towards PPP practice in developing countries, because these findings have wider implications for legal and regulatory systems, public capacity, financing, public procurement and politics.