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This paper aims to analyze the technical efficiency of Indian State governments in providing elementary education (EE) and to identify the determinants of their technical inefficiency.

The Generalized Stochastic Frontier Approach (GSFA) is used in the context of the Inefficiency Effects Model to simultaneously estimate the frontier production function and the technical inefficiency model. Panel data of 28 Indian States from 2009–10 to 2018–19 is used.

The mean efficiency of States stands at 86%. Efficiency varied between 67 and 97%. 96% of the inter-state disparity in EE outcomes can be explained by inefficiency. Arunachal Pradesh is the least efficient State, followed by Sikkim and Tripura. Efficiency estimates were observed to change across States over the study period. Proportion of government schools, rural population, and proportion of Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribe children are the major determinants of inefficiency.

This study emphasizes that efficient resource management is as important as adequate resource allocation for achieving positive EE outcomes. It distinguishes resource-poor States from inefficient ones, providing insights to enhance States’ efficiency, and aiding policymakers in formulating strategies for ensuring equitable and quality EE.

This is the first paper to apply GSFA (for Indian States), providing a more robust estimation of efficiency. The Inefficiency Effects Model is employed that address the limitations inherent in the two-stage approach.

Using the most recent dataset from 2013–2014 to 2017–2018, the study examines the efficiency of 75 coal-fired power plants in the Indian thermal power sector. The authors obtained robust estimates of efficiency scores by employing Seiford and Zhu’s (2002) DEA-based classification invariance technique to account for CO₂ emissions as an undesirable output. Meta-frontier analysis and the Tobit regression are used to compute technology heterogeneity across power plants belonging to public and private groups and investigate the factors driving carbon-adjusted efficiency, respectively. The results reveal that, on average, the efficiency of power plants during the study period is 78.26%, showing significant room for reduction in CO₂ emissions alongside augmentation in electricity generation. Private plants are more efficient than public ones, and relative performance inefficiency is the primary source of inefficiency in the thermal power sector. Regression analysis indicates that domestic-equipped plants perform with lesser levels of efficiency, and plants with more units are more inefficient than plants with fewer units. Carbon productivity significantly improves efficiency since fewer fossil fuels with high carbon will generate more electricity.

A nonsimilar boundary layer analysis is presented for the problem of mixed convection in power‐law type non‐Newtonian fluids along a vertical wedge with variable wall temperature distribution. The mixed convection regime is divided into two regions, namely, the forced convection dominated regime and the free convection dominated regime. The two solutions are matched. Numerical results are presented for the details of the velocity and temperature fields. A discussion is provided for the effect of viscosity index on the surface heat transfer rate.

Purpose: Green computing is a way of using the computer resource in an eco-friendly while maintaining and decreasing the harmful environmental impact. Minimising toxic materials and reducing energy usage can also be used to recycle the product.

Need for the Study: The motivation of the study is to use green computing resources to decrease carbon emissions and their adverse effect on the environment.

Methodology: The study uses a qualitative method of collecting resources and data to address the opportunities, challenges, and future trends in green computing for Sustainable Future Technologies. The study focusses on multiple kinds of cloud computing services collected and executed into single remote servers. The service demand processor offers these services to the client per their needs. The simultaneous requests to access the cloud services, processing and expertly managing these requests by the processors are discussed and analysed.

Findings: The findings suggest that green computing is an upcoming and most promising area. The number of resources employed for green computing can be beneficial for lowering E-waste so that computing can be environmentally friendly and self-sustainable.

Practical Implications: Green computing applies across all industries and service sectors like healthcare, entertainment, tourism, and education. The convergence of technologies like Cloud Computing, AI, and Internet of Things (IoT) is greatly impacting Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) market.

The purpose of this paper is to find out the factors contributing to major shifts in the growth of tax revenue through the estimation of structural breaks and analysis of major tax regimes. Recent contributions to optimal tax theory and empirical literature on the Laffer curve effect, based on elasticity of taxable income, challenge the settled understanding on the rate-revenue relationship. In this backdrop, the objective of the paper is to find out the relative significance of changes in tax rate, tax base and administrative reforms in affecting the growth of tax revenue in India. The paper considers tax data spanning a period of six and half decades for five major components of direct and indirect taxes (corporation, personal income, customs, excise and service) of the central government of India.

Unknown break point(s) – single and multiple – in the tax structure are identified by using the Quandt-Andrews and Bai-Perron econometric tests. These tests were conducted for two models of growth of taxes (tax revenue and tax-NDP ratio) estimated using semi-log functions. A simulation exercise was conducted to find out the robustness of the results by varying the trimming parameter and number of breaks. An analytical framework is used to understand the factors associated with these breaks.

There is more than one break identified for every tax component as per the results of Bai–Perron test. The simulation exercise suggests that estimated breakpoints are mostly robust. Economic growth, structural changes in the economy, simplification and rationalization of tax structure, tax competition, policies such as liberalization have contributed to the changing tax regimes. Results of this study suggest that high tax rates have not been, in particular, detrimental to achieving growth in revenue and factors other than changes in tax rates have been more prominent in bringing about the shifts.

This is, perhaps, the first paper exploring the multiple structural breaks in the fiscal variables in India. It offers an understanding of the changing regimes of central government taxes and the underlying factors for the same.

A review on additive manufacturing (AM) of shape memory polymer composites (SMPCs) is put forward to highlight the progress made up to date, conduct a critical review and show the limitations and possible improvements in the different research areas within the different AM techniques. The purpose of this study is to identify academic and industrial opportunities.

This paper introduces the reader to three-dimensional (3 D) and four-dimensional printing of shape memory polymers (SMPs). Specifically, this review centres on manufacturing technologies based on material extrusion, photopolymerization, powder-based and lamination manufacturing processes. AM of SMPC was classified according to the nature of the filler material: particle dispersed, i.e. carbon, metallic and ceramic and long fibre reinforced materials, i.e. carbon fibres. This paper makes a distinction for multi-material printing with SMPs, as multi-functionality and exciting applications can be proposed through this method. Manufacturing strategies and technologies for SMPC are addressed in this review and opportunities in the research are highlighted.

This paper denotes the existing limitations in the current AM technologies and proposes several directions that will contribute to better use and improvements in the production of additive manufactured SMPC. With advances in AM technologies, gradient changes in material properties can open diverse applications of SMPC. Because of multi-material printing, co-manufacturing sensors to 3D printed smart structures can bring this technology a step closer to obtain full control of the shape memory effect and its characteristics. This paper discusses the novel developments in device and functional part design using SMPC, which should be aided with simple first stage design models followed by complex simulations for iterative and optimized design. A change in paradigm for designing complex structures is still to be made from engineers to exploit the full potential of additive manufactured SMPC structures.

Advances in AM have opened the gateway to the potential design and fabrication of functional parts with SMPs and their composites. There have been many publications and reviews conducted in this area; yet, many mainly focus on SMPs and reserve a small section to SMPC. This paper presents a comprehensive review directed solely on the AM of SMPC while highlighting the research opportunities.

By incorporating the role of nonperforming loans (NPLs), the study aims to assess the impact of global financial crisis (GFC) on the intermediation efficiency of Indian banks for the period of 1998/99 to 2016/17.

To obtain efficiency level of Indian banks, this study applied sequential data envelopment analysis (DEA) based directional distance function (DDF) approach, which performed simultaneous expansion of desirable output and reduction of undesirable output in the bank's loan production structure. Additionally, using fixed effect regression approach in the panel data framework, this study assesses both the phenomenon of σ- and unconditional β-efficiency convergence in public sector banks (PSBs), private banks (PBs), foreign banks (FBs) and overall scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) during the pre-crisis, crisis and post-crisis years in India.

Irrespective of the bank's production model, the evidence suggests that the accounting NPLs as an undesirable output significantly deteriorating the intermediation technical efficiency levels of Indian banks, especially after the crisis years until the last year of the study period. This reflects that Indian banks failed more to achieve their financial intermediation objective in the post-crisis years as compared to the crisis and pre-crisis years. In-depth, statistical evidence of commercial bank ownership groups reveals that public sector banks exhibit a higher level of efficiency in pursuance of traditional loan-based activity followed by private and foreign banks. The study also found the existence of sigma convergence in technical efficiency levels of Indian banks and ownership groups as well.

This study is perhaps the first one, which present the robust evolution of Indian banks intermediation efficiency by taking into account both endogenous (i.e. NPLs as an undesirable output and equity as a quasi-fixed input in the bank production process) crisis and exogenous (i.e. global financial and economic stress) crises. Moreover, none of the existing studies have conducted sub-period wise analysis to show the apparent occurrence of both convergence properties in technical efficiency, adding novelty in the literature.

This paper aims to provide empirical evidence for the impact globalization has had on the performance of the banking sector in South Africa. In addition, this study also investigates bank-specific characteristics and macroeconomic conditions that may influence the performance of the banking sector.

The authors use data collected for all commercial banks in South Africa between 1998 and 2012. The ratio of return on assets was used to measure bank performance. They then used the dynamic panel regression with the generalized method of moments as an estimation method to investigate the potential determinants and the impact of globalization on bank performance.

Positive impact of greater economic integration and trade movements of the host country, while greater social globalization in the host country tends to exert negative influence on bank profitability. The results show that banks originating from the relatively more economically globalized countries tend to perform better, while banks headquartered in countries with greater social and political globalizations tend to exhibit lower profitability levels.

An empirical model was developed that allows for the performance of multinational banks to depend on internal and external factors. Moreover, unlike the previous studies on bank performance, in this empirical analysis, we control for the different dimensions of globalizations while taking into account the origins of the multinational banks. The procedure allows us to test for the home field, the liability of foreignness and global advantage hypotheses to deduce further insights into the prospects of banking across borders.

The purpose of this paper is to provide new empirical evidence on the performance of multinational banks as a subset of the eclectic theory.

The paper employs the least square method of random effects model (REM). The opportunity to use a random effects rather than a fixed effects model has been tested with the Hausman test. To control for cross‐section heteroscedasticity of the variables, the study employs White's transformation.

The empirical findings indicate that credit risk, overhead costs, income from non‐traditional sources, and loans intensity contribute positively to the profitability of the foreign subsidiaries. The results seem to suggest that the parent bank's branch networks exert positive influence on their foreign subsidiaries in India, while the size of the parent banks negatively influences their Indian subsidiaries’ performance.

Due to its limitations, the present study could be extended in a variety of ways. First, future research could include more variables such as taxation and regulation indicators, and exchange rates as well as indicators of the quality of the offered services. Second, future studies could also examine the differences in the determinants of profitability between small and large or high and low profitability banks. Third, in terms of methodology, frontier optimization techniques such as the data envelopment analysis, the stochastic frontier analysis, and/or the Malmquist productivity index methods are recommended to examine the performance of the foreign subsidiaries of multinational banks operating in the Indian banking sector.

Studies on the potential benefit of foreign bank entry have been studied extensively. Still, little is known about in which type of country, and under which circumstances, foreign banks have an advantage over their domestic bank peers. Furthermore, Claessens and van Horen point out that the recent financial crisis has highlighted risks associated with cross‐border banking and foreign banks presence. These developments have led to greater interest among policy makers and academicians for more analyses to help guide regulatory reform.

The empirical works concerning multinational banking have mainly focused on the determinants and methods of multinational banks entry into foreign markets. On the other hand, empirical evidence on the performance of multinational banks as a subset of the eclectic theory is scarce. By using the whole gamut of foreign subsidiaries of multinational banks operating in the Indian banking sector during the period 2000 to 2008, the paper contributes to this line of the literature.

Friction welding is a solid state bonding process, where the joint between two metals has been established without melting the metal. The relative motion between the faying surfaces (surfaces to be joined) under the application of pressure promotes surface interaction, friction and heat generation which subsequently results in joint formation. Stainless steel is an iron based alloy, contains various combinations of other elements to give desired characteristics, and found a wider range of applications in the areas such as petro‐chemical, fertilizer, automotive, food processing, cryogenic, nuclear and beverage sectors. In order to exploit the complete advantages of stainless steels, suitable joining techniques are highly demanded. The Friction welding is an easily integrated welding method of stainless steel, which considered as non‐weldable through fusion welding. Grain coarsening, creep failure and failure at heat‐affected zone are the major limitations of fusion welding of similar stainless steels. Friction welding eliminates such pitfalls. In the present work an attempt is made to investigate experimentally, the mechanical and metallurgical properties of friction welded joints, namely, austenitic stainless steel (AISI 304) and ferritic stainless steel (AISI 430). Evaluation of the characteristics of welded similar stainless steel joints are carried out through tensile test, hardness measurement and metallurgical investigations.