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This paper tries to explain variation in company-level innovation activities based on certain firm-level characteristics in India between 2010 and 2020.

Probit and Heckman’s two-step estimation based on panel data consisting of annual consolidated financial statements of 8,529 companies.

Firm-level innovation activities were associated with larger company size, lower age, higher access to digital assets and voluntary expenses on environmental sustainability and social responsibility.

This paper is based on company-level financial statements and hence does not include aspects related to human capital, managerial capacities, participation in the global value chain and collaboration with other industries or academia.

This paper uses alternative measures of innovation such as promotional expenses and holding of intangible assets by companies in India alongside R&D expenditure, which is largely used in the past literature. The company characteristics also include emerging areas such as digitalisation, and spending on environmental sustainability and social responsibility, in addition to the conventional factors such as firm size, age and exposure to exports.

This study aims to explore the long-run equilibrium relationship between India’s real exchange rate and sectoral productivity trends using internationally comparable KLEMS databases on productivity for India, China, Euro area, the USA, the UK and Japan.

This study uses pooled mean group estimations for panel data suggested by Pesaran et al. (1999). This method is chosen because of the presence of variables with different orders of integration.

The results find support for an “extended” Balassa–Samuelson (BS) hypothesis which allows labour market frictions that does not allow for wage equalisation between traded and non-traded sectors within a country. This mechanism continues to find some support when we separate out distribution sector that comprises wholesale and retail trade in the domestic services sector. The empirical evidence suggests that India’s real exchange rate is anchored to domestic fundamentals and is closely aligned to its fair value over a medium to long-time horizon.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, unlike the available literature, which uses aggregate per-capita income as proxy for a country’s productivity growth, this paper perhaps makes the first attempt to validate the BS hypothesis by accounting for productivity differential at the sectoral levels using KLEMS data across countries. Moreover, this study takes the country’s productivity improvement rather than using a basket of countries, a prevalent practice in the literature. While this paper uses India’s data, which witnessed a prolonged appreciation in its real effective exchange rate and rapid technological progress, the authors believe its findings and policy implications could be applicable to the similar emerging market economies.

The study provides medium-term estimates of recovery paths for Indian economy using a dynamic factor (DF)-based approach that employs data on high-frequency indicators à la Bhadury, Ghosh, and Kumar (2020). The DFs are used to analyze the post-pandemic recovery and convergence with its pre-COVID-19 trend for India between March 2021 and March 2022. A broad sectoral assessment of the impact of COVID-19 is also conducted. In addition, forward-looking measures based on stock returns are used to analyze the transmission of additional banking sector risks to the real sectors by constructing daily delta conditional value-at-risk (CoVaR) estimates. Our estimates based on the DFs suggest that the aggregate economic activities may catch up to the estimated pre-COVID trend by March 2021 predominantly driven by the growth in services sector. The industrial sector and consumer goods sector continue to show moderate signs of recovery. Our CoVaR estimates corroborate these findings. Banking sector transmission risk is among the lowest for services such as healthcare and information technology (IT), for both the lockdown period between March 25 and June 8, 2020, and for the latter months. The transmission risk continues to remain high for metal, oil and gas, and capital goods sector. Broadly, the evidence on forward-looking banking sector risk transmission for major sectors is in alignment with our finding on their recovery based on DF models, after easing of COVID-19 lockdown.

The paper aims to develop a theoretical model to explain the exact process through which the scale effect works to create a possible wedge between a perception-based ranking like the “Corruption Perception Index (CPI) ” and the axiomatic “absolute costs of corruption”-based ranking of economies with low enforcement against corruption.

The paper takes into account corruption both at the “high” and “low” levels of bureaucracies, where the bribes are paid sequentially at the two levels. The bribes are endogenously determined at the equilibrium using a sequential game approach.

The paper finds that in the absence of coalition between the two levels of bureaucrats, both the absolute level of corruption and the welfare level of the economies are expected to vary inversely with the perceived corruption frequency. The paper also explores the possibility of a stable coalition between the “high” and “low” level bureaucrats and shows that with the perception of a stable coalition being formed, the negative monotonic relation between the corruption frequency and the absolute size of corruption breaks down.

First, the paper argues that the ranking of the economies with low enforcement against corruption on the basis of perceived corruption frequency may not reflect the ranking of the economies according to their absolute size of corruption; it points out that the perceived higher corruption frequency in an economy as reflected in CPI can be an indicator of both the lower size of “high” level corruption and absolute size of corruption in the economy. Particularly, this happens in economies where coalition between the “high” and “low” level officials does not form. Second, it identifies the exact way in which the scale effect works to create a difference in the CPI ranking and the axiomatic “absolute costs of corruption”-based ranking and explains why similar difference would exist if “absolute costs of corruption”-based ranking is derived from all the sources of hard data on corruption. Third, it explains why a stable coalition between the “high” and “low” level bureaucrats in economies with low enforcement does not usually form.

The purpose of this paper is to accomplish two objectives – to test the functional relationship between adoption readiness (AR), perceived risk (PR) and usage intention for mobile payments in India and to investigate the stability of proposed structural relationships across different customer groups.

The literature concerning major attributes of technology acceptance were systematically reviewed to develop construct of AR. Post that a comprehensive model consisting of AR, personal innovativeness and PR was put together. The model was then empirically tested using structural equation modelling.

On appraising the proposed model, five out of six hypotheses were fully supported while one hypothesis was partially supported. Test of invariance showed significant variance among users and non-users.

The results of the study may vary with national context, service offerings, regulatory framework and other customer personal variables (i.e. lifestyle) suggesting future research opportunities.

The results facilitate the comprehension of the role of different factors on the mobile payments usage intention among customers. In addition, the results expand the knowledge on consumer behaviour towards financial technological innovations.

The results expand one's knowledge on this relationship, propounding interesting empirical evidence of the model invariance among different consumer groups.

The link between supply chain agility (SCA) and performance has been tested in previous research with different samples and results. The present paper quantitatively analyses and summarises the impact of SCA on performance found in previous empirical papers and determines the influence of several identified moderators.

Using a meta-analysis approach based on a systematic literature review, a total of 63 empirical papers comprising a sample of 14,469 firms were meta-analysed to consider substantive (type of performance and SCA operationalisation) and extrinsic (economic region and industry) moderators.

Results confirm a significantly large, positive correlation between SCA and performance. None of the analysed moderators has enabled the identification of any significant differences between the SCA and performance correlations by subgroup. However, high heterogeneity in total variance, both in the full sample and the subgroups by moderator, demands further rigorously reported empirical research on this topic with clearly conceptualised variables and frameworks and the use of validated scales.

Several research gaps and best practice recommendations have been indicated to improve future empirical research on this topic.

Practitioners in different economic regions and industries will find consistent evidence of improvements in performance through SCA.

No meta-analysis has been found in previous research to estimate the value of the correlation between SCA and performance and the influence of moderating variables.

Ni coating was electroplated on carbon steel substrate to protect carbon steel.

During electroplating, the ultrasonic irradiation (UI) (1 kHz) action was in situ used with different frequency. The influence of UI on the microstructure, mechanical and electrochemical performance of the coating was studied with scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, microhardness measurement, polarization curves and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy.

The results show that comparing that without UI imposition, UI during electroplating can refine the coating grain and decrease the micro-pores in the coating, resulting in improvement of the coating corrosion and hardness.

The imposition of UI action during electroplating Ni coating can remove intrinsic pores in the coating and compact the coating. The potential bimetallic cell between substrate and plating layer can be insulated to enhance the corrosion resistance of Ni coating. The imposition of UI action during electroplating Ni coating can refine Ni coating grain size and improve the coating haredness.