Home Menu
icon-menu-close.svg

Faculty & Research

Faculty & Research

Research Productive

Show result

Clear
Search Query :
Area :
Search Query :
3587 items in total found

Working Papers | 2023

Tests to Determine Employer-Employee Relationships in India: Looking towards the Future?

M. P. Ram Mohan and Sai Muralidhar K.

The underpinning of an employee’s social security benefits is an employer-employee relationship. Workers are traditionally classified as employees (contract of service) or independent contractors (contract for service). Over the years, Indian courts relied on the control, integration and multifactor tests to determine the correct nature of employment contracts. The paper explores the evolution of these tests and examines whether the standards of the burden of proof in classification disputes require modification. The authors then dissect the efficacy of the current multifactor tests in emerging platforms and gig economies by looking at standard form contracts signed by a popular food delivery platform in India. Finally, the ability of newly enacted labour codes, particularly the Code on Social Security 2020, to address the classification conundrum and its consistency with precedents is explored.

View File
Read More

Working Papers | 2023

Unlocking the Power of Accelerators: The Crucial Role of Institutions in Boosting New Venture Performance

Pramendra Singh Tank

Accelerators are becoming popular in helping new ventures succeed. However, current research on their impact on new venture performance does not consider the role of institutional environment. This paper examines the importance of institutions and assesses the impact of accelerators on new venture performance using a generalized difference-in-differences technique on a worldwide accelerator database. The study finds that while accelerators positively impact revenue and equity funding, however the impact is higher in countries with strong institutions. The study highlights the significance of institutions in assessing the impact of accelerators on new ventures, contributing to nascent research in this area.

View File
Read More

Working Papers | 2023

Green Bonds and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)

Sanjay Kumar Jain

I study the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act (2022) on the cost of green bonds in the USA. In this study, I employ a difference-in-difference methodology to compare the cost of green bonds issued by US firms in USD after the implementation of IRA by taking green bonds issued by Non-US firms as a counterfactual. I find that after the implementation of IRA, the cost of green bonds in the USA decreased compared to that in other countries. Findings indicate that Governments can mitigate constraints on the cost and supply of climate financing through fiscal policy interventions that improve business environments for firms and spur the demand for cleaner fuels and products from individuals

View File
Read More

Working Papers | 2023

Environmental Claims under Indian Insolvency Law: Concepts and Challenges

M. P. Ram Mohan and Sriram Prasad

The intersection between environmental liability claims and insolvency of the entity concerned have grown increasingly complex. Over the years, India has seen enactment of several laws and proactive judicial decisions to ensure liability from environmental harm are addressed through application of no-fault and absolute liability principles. A consequence of these principles is, if an entity harms the environment, they must bear the cost of clean-up. If the entity defaults on the compensation payment or is unable to pay, then, under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016 (IBC) they may be able to declare themselves as insolvent. When admitted under insolvency, a moratorium on all claims is imposed. Once resolution has taken place, the corporate debtor is provided with a “fresh start”, relieving the debtor from all its previous debts and liabilities. If the debtor goes into liquidation, through the waterfall mechanism, financial creditors are given priority over environmental claimants who would mostly be categorised either as contingent claimants or decree holders. In these scenarios, insolvency law supersedes environmental law/policy by design, creating a visible human rights implication. While the IBC seems to be agnostic to social causes, there are other avenues to deal with social causes, such as the Public Liability Insurance Act which deals with hazardous environmental accidents in a limited way. In the paper, we argue, insurance provides a better framework to resolve environmental liabilities and that the insurance schemes should remain intact regardless of a fresh start.

View File
Read More

Working Papers | 2023

Social Token Economics for GAU Coin

Nishant Krishna, Amit Garg, Gaurav Kumar Kedia, and Aprajita Mishra

This paper discusses the Token Economics around the GAU Coin. All the aspects of Token Economics, including rewards system, incentivisation, ways to increase adoption, methods to measure social impact, strategies to bring the developer community into the ecosystem, commodity flows, and many others are discussed. Various GAU Coin Ecosystem Partners and Enablers and how they interact with the ecosystem are also identified. Later, GAU NFT for the participants of the GAU Coin network can also be thought of, along with creating the entire network of artists and infrastructure around it. GAU Coin is a Social Token and is not a Cryptocurrency. The GAU Coin represents the digital form of what a person owns as part of the GAU ecosystem and brings Social Credibility.

View File
Read More

Journal Articles | 2023

Litigating Barbie: trade mark infringement, parody and free speech

M. P. Ram Mohan, and Aditya Gupta

Delaware Journal of Corporate Law

In the contemporary marketplace, trade marks are not mere monikers of origin. While often regarded as commercial symbols, trade marks sometimes become part of the commonplace vocabulary and are indelibly linked to expressing ideas and thoughts. In recent years, the dichotomy of expansive protection offered through the trade mark law and use of marks as part of expressive vocabulary has become increasingly controversial. One such trade mark which has amassed immense communicative strength is Mattel Inc.’s Barbie. The mark has assumed an enduring prominence in contemporary language and has assumed the status of a cultural icon. The present study examines the regulation of expressive secondary uses of trade marks by employing Barbie as a case study. Comparatively analysing the treatment of the Barbie mark in India, the USA, and Canada, the authors underline an imperative need to adopt a legislative framework to protect the expressive and artistic secondary use of popular trade marks.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2023

Emerging practices and research issues for big data analytics in freight transportation

Michael F. Gorman, John-Paul Clarke, René de Koster, Michael Hewitt, Debjit Roy, and Mei Zhang

Maritime Economics & Logistics

Freight transportation has been experiencing a renaissance in data sources, storage, and dissemination of data to decision makers in the last decades, resulting in new approaches to business and new research streams in analytics to support them. We provide an overview of developments in both practice and research related to big data analytics (BDA) in each of the major areas of freight transportation: air, ocean, rail, and truck. In each case, we first describe new capabilities in practice, and avenues of research given these evolving capabilities. New data sources, volumes and timeliness directly affect the way the industry operates, and how future researchers in these fields will structure their work. We discuss the evolving research agenda due to BDA and formulate fundamental research questions for each mode of freight transport.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2023

Mutual fund asset allocation during COVID-19: evidence from an emerging market

Joshy Jacob, Nilesh Gupta, and Balagopal Gopalakrishnan

Applied Economics

The paper examines the investment decisions of Indian equity mutual funds during various stages of the COVID-19 pandemic with monthly portfolio holdings. We find that funds favoured firms with lower risk, higher financial flexibility, and larger size during the early months of the pandemic. The preference for relatively low-risk firms, which reverses later, suggests a reallocation towards safer assets. Funds also preferred growth firms to value firms as the latter with greater invested capital are more vulnerable to the shock. Institutional investors also favoured group-affiliated firms throughout, reflecting their lower crisis vulnerability. We find that the stocks preferred by funds during the pandemic outperform others in the long run. The paper brings out key firm characteristics that impact mutual fund asset allocation during extreme uncertainty.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2023

A General purpose exact solution method for mixed integer concave minimization problems

Ankur Sinha, Arka Das, Guneshwar Anand, and Sachin Jayaswal

European Journal of Operational Research

In this article, we discuss an exact algorithm for solving mixed integer concave minimization problems. A piecewise inner-approximation of the concave function is achieved using an auxiliary linear program that leads to a bilevel program, which provides a lower bound to the original problem. The bilevel program is reduced to a single level formulation with the help of Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) conditions. Incorporating the KKT conditions lead to complementary slackness conditions that are linearized using BigM, for which we identify a tight value for general problems. Multiple bilevel programs, when solved over iterations, guarantee convergence to the exact optimum of the original problem. Though the algorithm is general and can be applied to any optimization problem with concave function(s), in this paper, we solve two common classes of operations and supply chain problems; namely, the concave knapsack problem, and the concave production-transportation problem. The computational experiments indicate that our proposed approach outperforms the customized methods that have been used in the literature to solve the two classes of problems by an order of magnitude in most of the test cases.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2023

Predicting the outbreak of epidemics using a network-based approach

Saikat Das, Indranil Bose, and Uttam Kumar Sarkar

European Journal of Operational Research

The spread of epidemics is a common societal problem across the world. Can operational research be used to predict such outbreaks? While equation-based approaches are used to model the trajectory of epidemics, can a network-based approach also be used? This paper presents an innovative application of epidemic modelling through the design of both approaches and compares between the two. The network-based approach proposed in this paper allows implementing heterogeneity at the level of individuals and incorporates flexibility in the variety of situations the model can be applied to. In contrast to the equation-based approach, the network-based approach can address the role of individual differences, network properties, and patterns of social contacts responsible for the spread of epidemics but are much more complex to implement. In this paper, we simulated the spread of infection at the beginning of Covid-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019) using both approaches. The results are showcased using empirical data for eight countries. Sophisticated measures, including partial curve mapping, are used to compare the simulated results with the actual number of infections. We find that the plots generated by the network-based approach match the empirical data better than the equation-based approach. While both approaches can be used to predict the spread of infections, we conclusively show that the proposed network-based approach is better suited with its ability to model the spread of epidemics at the level of an individual. Hence, this can be a model of choice for epidemiologists who are interested to model the spread of an epidemic.

Go to link
Read More
IIMA