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3852 items in total found

Journal Articles | 2024

Mutation of the Trademark Doctrine: Analysing actionable use to reconcile brand identities with constitutional safeguards

"M P Ram Mohan Aditya Gupta"

With continuous and consistent use, trademarks can come to signify opulence, luxury, and dependability; and become cultural icons. The modern trademark doctrine must accommodate these realities of the marketplace while, at the same time, accommodating the flourishing exchange of expressive uses through unauthorised use of trademarks. This push-and-pull has resulted in the complete obliteration of what were already obscure boundaries between the expressive and marketing spheres of trademark law. The present study examines the normative foundations of the modern trademark doctrine, drawing from American, English, and European trademark jurisprudence. These foundations are then extrapolated to Indian trademark law to create a workable limitation of the mutating trademark doctrine through recalibrating the actionable use requirement. The authors attempt to discern the normative foundations of the individual cause of actions in the infringement liability and argue that such foundations should serve to delimit the scope of protection offered therein. Given the relevance of expressive uses in trademark law, the present study also examines the relevance of constitutional and policy-based arguments in determining trademark infringement liability. We find that within Indian judicial discourse, there is an alarming disconnect between the normative foundations of infringement liability and their interpretation. This affects the interpretation of the limitations offered by the trademark statute and can potentially push trademark law in troubling directions.

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Working Papers | 2024

Washed Away: Industrial Capital, Labor, and Floods

Anish Sugathan, Arpit Shah, Deepak Malghan

This study quantifies the dynamic impacts of floods on industrial capital and labor in India using a novel dataset combining geocoded flood events with firm facility-level data from 2000 to 2021. Employing a stacked difference-in-differences approach with carefully matched controls, we uncover persistent negative effects of floods on firms’ assets and employment, with striking heterogeneity across sectors and regions. In the post-flood period, we estimate declines from mean values in total assets of 46.1% (16.68 billion INR ≈ 225 million USD), employment of 49.0% (8.20 thousand workers), and the wage bill of 74.5% (5.52 billion INR ≈ 74 million USD). The sectoral impacts are highly varied: the information technology and communication, manufacturing, and utilities sectors experience significant declines in assets, while the financial services sector exhibits growth. Mapping the spatial distribution of flood events and industrial facilities reveals pronounced regional heterogeneity in flood exposure and economic impacts. Adding nuance to the empirical investigation of the “creative destruction” hypothesis, we find limited evidence of systematic capital reallocation toward better-performing sectors, suggesting instead that floods generate sector-specific impacts with varying recovery patterns. These findings challenge assumptions of rapid post-disaster equilibration and have important implications for policymakers and firm managers in developing sector-specific strategies to mitigate the adverse impacts of floods in an increasingly climate-uncertain world.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Unraveling prosumption behavior for online reviews during environmental uncertainty: A stimulus-response perspective

Manisha Rathi, Adrija Majumdar, Sawan Rathi

Online reviews are effective information-sharing tools due to their word-of-mouth characteristics. The extant literature has considered reviews as independent variables that influence business performance, while the environmental factors shaping these reviews remain under-explored. We examine the impact of COVID-19-related environmental uncertainties on changes in review prosumption (production and consumption) behavior. Based on the stimulus-response theory, with COVID-19 as the stimulus and prosumption as the response, we examined the changes in the characteristics of online reviews. Using the difference-in-differences methodology, we analyze online reviews of restaurants in two US cities that experienced different levels of COVID-19 impact. On the production side, we find an increased use of contextual terms and negative sentiments. On the consumption side, we find an increase in review usefulness and a decline in funniness. The results are robust, supported by coarsened exact matching and falsification tests. We conclude with a discussion of the study’s implications and contributions.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Punjab's Draft Farm Policy: Missing markets for the cooperative model

Sukhpal Singh

A policy for Punjab agriculture has been long overdue given that it has been facing an agrarian crisis for the last 30 years. Many attempts were made in the past which did not fructify into a policy. In early 2023, a committee was formed to formulate a policy for the agricultural sector, without any terms of reference. The report submitted in October 2023 was made public only in September 2024. This article examines the major recommandations of the draft policy on issues faced by the state’s farm sector and their weaknesses. 

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Journal Articles | 2024

Digital technologies exacerbating mission drift in microfinance institutions: Evidence from India

Nidhi S. Bisht, Ernesto Noronha, Arun Kumar Tripathy

Digital technologies (DTs) are increasingly recognized as crucial in addressing social issues related to inequality and enhancing the well-being and agency of socially marginalized groups. We however, provide evidence that, instead of alleviating social inequalities, use of DTs (re)produced and exacerbated these inequalities in disparate forms, for an already marginalized population. Based on a qualitative study of employees from five microfinance institutions (MFIs) in India that offer uncollateralized group loans to poor rural women, our findings demonstrate how the pursuit of financial gains through DTs in providing microfinance exacerbated mission drift in MFIs, leading to reduced quality and depth of outreach. The use of DTs undermined social and human capital development — both crucial for alleviating poverty — and widened exclusion rather than bridging the gap. We explicate the quality of outreach (i.e., quality of services provided) as an additional dimension of social outreach, alongside the depth of outreach (i.e., reaching poorer borrowers) for understanding mission drift. Our findings call for consideration of existing intersectional social inequalities when leveraging DTs for social causes.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Salience of social identities in explaining homeownership patterns in India

Ashish Gupta, Prashant Das, Abhiman Das

Indian society presents heterogeneity across two identities – that is, religion and caste – that lead to heterogenous economic outcomes, but affirmative action is mostly applicable to caste. Our empirical models affirm that economically less secure households have a higher homeownership propensity in India. Minority religions and backward castes also have a significantly higher propensity to own homes. This is in sharp contrast to findings in the US where minority households are associated with lower homeownership rates. Further, religious and caste-based identities in India lead to different household behaviours in differing demographic mixes. Religious identity in India is more salient than caste identity in explaining differing homeownership patterns.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Digital payments in India — How demonetization and COVID-19 shaped adoption?

Varun Yadav, Abhiman Das

In this article, we study the adoption of digital payment technologies in India over the last decade. Using a quasi-experimental design, the study assesses if the demonetization exercise of 2016 led to an enhanced adoption of digital payments. We further study the evolution of digital payment usage in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study finds insufficient evidence supporting the claim that demonetization led to an enhanced adoption of digital channels (measured by the value of transactions as a percentage of money supply). On the other hand, the lockdown in the wake of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic spurred the adoption of some new-age payment channels.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Spokesperson effectiveness in B2B advertising: Spokesperson characteristics and posture using eye-tracking

Tanusree Dutta, Subhadip Roy, Soumya Sarkar, Sudipa Nag

This study aims to investigate the nuances of celebrity spokesperson effectiveness in business-to-business (B2B) advertising. Specifically, the study addresses the question of endorser effectiveness in the presence of product complexity (high vs low) and how this effect is moderated by endorser gender. In addition, the study also explores whether the way an endorser is placed in the advertisement (product-facing vs audience-facing) would have differential effects on the buyer.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Consumer perspectives on food traceability—A systematic literature review and future research agenda

Anam Chaudhary, Rajat Sharma, Vidya Vemireddy

Food traceability is a critical approach that ensures the safety and quality of food. It has garnered significant attention, particularly in the aftermath of multiple food safety incidents reported in various countries. While there is extant literature available on consumer perspectives on food traceability, the findings are not consistent across studies. This systematic literature review aims to provide a comprehensive understanding by integrating findings from past studies. It includes 61 articles sourced from two databases, namely Scopus and Web of Science. This review outlines various stages of a consumer's decision for food traceability, starting from exposure, awareness, understanding, liking and disliking, attitudes and preferences, purchase intentions and willingness to pay, to the final purchase. It also identifies the determinants of consumer responses to food traceability, categorising them as factors internal to the consumers, determinants due to the perception of external factors and contextual factors. Moreover, it identifies gaps in the existing research and proposes research questions to expand the knowledge in this area.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Adoption of agronomic practices and their impact on crop yield and income: An analysis for black gram and green gram in India

Poornima Varma, Julius Manda

Black gram and green gram are important pulse crops in India, but their production has faced fluctuations and stagnancy in yields over the last few decades. The Government of India has implemented several measures to enhance crop yield, including recommending and promoting the adoption of crop-specific agronomic practices. However, there is limited empirical evidence on the determinants of the adoption of these practices and their impact on yield and income. In this context, this study analyses the determinants of the adoption of climate and plant management practices among black gram and green gram farmers and their impact on yield, crop revenue and net income across four major crop-producing Indian states using a multinomial endogenous treatment effects model. Our analysis shows that information, contact with government extension services and access to off-farm activities are crucial in adopting climate and plant management practices. The results strengthen the view that the adoption of knowledge-intensive practices happens via formal information sources and plot-level demonstrations. In addition, the results indicate that farmers who experience frequent crop loss exhibit an aversion towards adopting climate and plant management practices. While adopting these practices had a positive impact on crop yield and crop revenue, the impact on net income was observed only in the case of climate management.

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