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3818 items in total found

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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Journal Articles | 2024

What explains rice exports? An analysis of major rice-exporting countries

Poornima Varma

This study examines the drivers of rice trade. The analysis uses the standard comparative advantage model, the Heckscher–Ohlin–Vanek (HOV) framework, supplemented with a gravity-type equation. Using the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML) estimation for data from 2002 to 2020, the analysis broadly confirms HOV model predictions. Results indicate that arable land, along with GDP, distance, precipitation and crop season temperature, significantly influences rice trade dynamics. The results showed that the precipitation play a key role in influencing the rice trade rather than the blue water availability. However, agricultural water stress discouraged exports and encouraged imports.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Problem of plenty? Understanding the Impact of choice and information overload on Airbnb bookings

V Athi Karthick, Adrija Majumdar, Indranil Bose

Online sharing platforms offer countless choices and detailed product descriptions to consumers. In this study, we demonstrate the effect of choice and information overload on booking decisions using large-scale field data from Airbnb and observe an inverse U-shaped association. Furthermore, our results show that providing quality assurance of the product exacerbates the choice and information overload relationship. As a post-hoc analysis, we perform topic modeling to gain better insights into how product information influences booking decisions. Specifically, the post-hoc analyses show that the number of topics in the description has a positive association with the number of bookings. Furthermore, topic count moderates the information overload effect by intensifying the influence of product description on the number of bookings. Our findings have important implications for online sharing platforms, service providers, and travelers as they shed light on the detrimental effects of excessive variety and information on booking decisions.

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Journal Articles | 2024

Trend and determinants of tobacco use among Indian males over a 22 year period (1998-2021) using nationally representative data

Shibaji Gupta, Piyasa Mal, Dhiman Bhadra, S Rajaa, Sonu Goel

Tobacco consumption is associated with an increased risk of morbidity and mortality. India is one of the largest consumers of tobacco worldwide. We assessed the trend of tobacco use among Indian males over a period of 20 years using data obtained from four rounds of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS).

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