Anweshan - journal of Department of Commerce, Vol. 05, No. 01

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://ir.nbu.ac.in/handle/123456789/2957

EDITORIAL

It is a matter of great satisfaction that despite of so many odds and hindrances finally we have become successful to publish our fifth volume of ANWESHAN at appropriate time. This time we have received huge response from the academic ambience of our country in the form of academic contribution to this journal. A lot of suggestions and constructive criticisms have been received from the learned academic personalities from all over the country. I am thankful to my departmental colleagues who have helped me a lot in connection with the publication of this issue on time. In this issue we have been able to accommodate research articles of varied nature and dimensions. A many of them are analytical in nature and some of them are highly conceptual in their character.

In the first article titled “Day-of-the-Week and other Market Anomalies in the Indian Stock Market” authored by Prof Abhijit Dutta has tried to understand the price behavior of the Indian stock market and find if the market prices of the calendar event such as day of the week and month of the year has any effect on the Indian stock market. The author has concluded that the variance in seasonality in the Indian market as compared to the other developed markets implies that this market is not yet integrated with the other world markets and can provide a good portfolio diversification opportunity.

In the second article titled “Community Based Tourism: An Analysis of consumer Behaviour” authored by Mr. Joydeep Mukherjee and Prof Sharmistha Banerjee have tried to throw some lights on the modified version of sustainable eco tourism , community based tourism with an ultimate focus on the protection of host communities’ socio cultural heritage. In this paper they have tried to diagnose sampled tourists’ behavior pattern in order to develop and manage the newly emerged concept of community based tourism. They have indentified three most important factors who motivate tourists to travel and influence their choice of destination which are Tourism Infrastructure, Nature and environment attraction and Cultural attraction.

In the third article titled “Growth–Inflation nexus in USA: A Threshold Regression Approach” authored by Dr. Debesh Bhowmik, Dr. Debasish Biswas and Prof Debabrata Mitra have tried to find out the nature of inflation of USA during 1961-2015 and to find out the nexus between inflation and growth using Granger causality , Johansen co-integration and vector error correction models. They have finally concluded that inflation of USA has been declining at the rate of around 1.6% during the period of their study. Growth inflation causality is unidirectional and they are cointegrated in the order one.

In the fourth article titled “EVA versus Traditional Accounting –based Financial Performance Measures: An Evaluation of Relative and Incremental Information Content in explaining variation in stock Return” authored by Prof Debdas Rakshit, Dr. Susanta Mitra and Mr. Mahesh Kumar Kurmi have tried to conduct a comprehensive study of the relative and incremental information content of EVA and its supremacy over other traditional accounting based financial performance measures in explaining the variations in stock returns. They have finally concluded that EVA has got a greater ability to predict stock returns in contrast with the traditional financial performance measures as it possesses the greatest information power in explaining the variations in the stock return.

In the fifth article titled “The Marshallian Theory of Industrial Districts and Its Italian Variant: The case of a pottery industry agglomerate in West Bengal” authored by Lawrence Thanislaus and Prof Indrajit Ray have tried to analyse an industrial agglomerate in West Bengal, in the neighbourhood of Siliguri town, which has a more recent origin, the post –Partition period of Bengal. In this article the author have tried to establish whether this cottage-industry agglomerate exhibits the traits of the theory of industrial district, which has largely been developed on the experience of modern industries in developed countries. Finally they have concluded that the reasons for this agglomeration are mainly due to the pull factors such as proximity to raw materials, market accessibility, transport facilities and above all its locational advantages.

In the sixth article titled “Driver Behaviour Inventory as Predictors of Driving Crashes and Near Misses among Professional Drivers: Testing a Contextual Mediated Model” authored by Prof Kh. Tomba Singh and A.S. Rapheileng have conducted an extensive research work to investigate the relative impact of various sources of stress classified as distal and proximal on driving outcomes, that is , occurrence of near misses and accidents. Their study has provided some important information and deep insight into a range of internal and external factors who have got a profound influence on drivers’ occupational stress level.

The last research study titled “Influence of Demographic and Job Related Factors on the Performance of the Life Insurance Advisors in the Kolkata Region” authored by Ipsita C. Patranabis has tried to determine the influence of selected demographic and job related characteristics on the performance of life advisors of the Kolkata region. In this study it has been found a notable impact of gender on the performance of the advisors. It has also been recommended that life insurance organizations should have long-term policies to encourage and support female advisors to rise in their career because encouraging female advisors to rise will not only bring about balanced diversity but it will also facilitate to reach out to the prospective female customers at a larger extent.

I firmly believe and hope that the research articles published in this issue are adequately enriched to provide food for thought to the new and existing researchers working in these fields. Any sort of constructive criticisms, observations are always welcome from my end.

Lastly, I want to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to all staff members of North Bengal University Press specially Mr. Indranil Ray and Mr. Debasish Chakraborty for their untiring and relentless effort for bringing out this issue of our esteemed Departmental Journal on right time.

Professor (Dr.) Debabrata Mitra
Editor-in-Chief

Browse

Filters

20177

Advanced Search

Filter by

Settings

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Influence of Demographic and Job Related Factors on the Performance of the Life Insurance Advisors in the Kolkata Region
    (University of North Bengal, 2017-03) Patranabis, Ipsita C.
    It has been accepted by business, academia and practitioners that one of the indispensable resources of any organization is its human resource. Manpower is regarded as a capital investment of an organization and thus the quality of manpower inventory of an organization is the source of value-addition for the system. In the services sector, selection of employees has a unique perspective because of the intangibility of transactions. Recruitment and selection is a critical exercise of any organization because this acts as a foundation on the both short term and long term performance for the business. However, the evaluation metrics for performance differs inter and intra industry and in all sectors. It primarily depends on the need of the business and the nature of transaction expected from its employees. An extensive study of the literature has revealed that demographic variables play a key role in influencing performance of sales employees. This takes a much greater dimension when such sale is that of an intangible service like insurance. The new-age customers have led to the change in the art and science of selling. Rich literature documents the importance of job tenure, functional background, or other job-related variables as well as visible demographic characteristics such as age, race and ethnicity, and gender as important influencers of performance (Frink, et al., 2003). The primary purpose of this study was to determine the influence of selected demographic and job related characteristics on the performance of life insurance advisors of the Kolkata region. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted on 200 life insurance advisors of the Kolkata region and data regarding the demography was captured by administering the instrument. Descriptive statistics have been used to analyze sample profile. Results of this research work may have managerial implications in the insurance industry whereby, the selection process of insurance advisors (direct insurance sellers) may use inferences derived from such studies. HR managers responsible for hiring may undertake a preliminary screening based on the demography and some other job related characteristics of the prospective candidates. Thus the research may be meaningful in a way as it may find its applicability in the life insurance industry where advisors may be chosen from the appropriate cross-section of the targeted population so that they have higher propensity of accomplishing higher levels of performance in the future.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Driver Behaviour Inventory as Predictors of Driving Crashes and Near Misses among Professional Drivers: Testing a Contextual Mediated Model
    (University of North Bengal, 2017-03) Singh, Kh. Tomba; Rapheileng, A. S.
    The adjusted version of Driver Behaviour Inventory devised by Kontogiannis (2006) based on previous research (Mathews et al., 1999) was used as a measure of stress in this study. Three hundred and twenty two male professional bus (n = 36) and lorry (n = 286) drivers aged between 20 and 61years (mean = 37.96, SD = 8.19 years) participated in the study. The varimax extractions through PCA summarised all the original five factors. A contextual mediated model was proposed to distinguished the distal (demographic and traffic related variables) and proximal (aberrant driving behaviours) factors in predicting near misses and accidents. Examination of the structural path parameters through SPSS-AMOS v 22.0 revealed that five out of sixteen possible paths from the distal context to proximal context were significant and also five out of eight possible paths from the proximal context to the outcomes were significant.The level of driving confidence and general overtaking decreased as drivers became older. Similarly, drivers’ driving confidence level decreased as their driving distance increased. As expected, driving confidence and general overtaking level increased as their years of driving experience increased. Occurrences of near misses were positively predicted by driving confidence, general overtaking and dislike of driving. Also, occurrences of major accidents increased with an increased in the level of driving confidence and dislike of driving. Age, experience and mileage indirectly predicted both near misses and accidents via driving confidence. Also, age, experience and mileage indirectly predicted near misses via general overtaking, but did not necessarily predict accidents.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    The Marshallian Theory of Industrial Districts and Its Italian Variant: The case of a pottery industry agglomerate in West Bengal
    (University of North Bengal, 2017-03) Thanislaus, Lawrence; Ray, Indrajit
    Rightly from the days of Alfred Marshall the concept of industrial district has been assuming importance in the economic literature. Various theoretical aspects of this concept have been discussed under the genre of ‘the theory of industrial districts’.1 The theory has also been put into empirical tests in various countries, which have enriched the facets of the theory. In this background, the present article seeks to analyse an industrial agglomerate in West Bengal, in the neighbourhood of the Siliguri town, which has a more recent origin, the post-Partition period of Bengal. It is an agglomerate of the pottery industry, which belongs to the cottage sector,. It gives an opportunity to verify whether this cottage-industry agglomerate exhibits the traits of the theory of industrial district, which has largely been developed on the experiences of modern industries in developed countries. The organisation of this article is this. Section I defines the term ‘industrial districts’, and then describes their features and seeks to identity the reasons for their emergence. It also cites examples of such districts in various countries along with their characteristics, along with the government interventions in those countries in this respect. The remaining sections deal with our case study. Section II describes the locational features of the study area; and Sections III discusses the status of the industry in a nutshell. Finally, in Section IV, we argue that Pal Para represents an industrial district, which belongs to the genre of Marshallian industrial districts. Section V concludes. I
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    EVA verses Traditional Accounting-based Financial Performance Measures: An Evaluation of Relative and Incremental Information Content in explaining Variation in Stock Return
    (University of North Bengal, 2017-03) Rakshit, Debdas; Mitra, Susanta; Kurmi, Mahesh Kumar
    Modern value-based financial performance measures, in particular EVA, is argued by its proponents as a major improvement over the Traditional accounting-based financial performance measures on the ground that EVA is more informative than the traditional performance measures in explaining the variations in stock returns. On the contrary, a good number of other researchers argued that traditional financial performance measures are more informative in contrast to EVA. However, various empirical studies have been conducted in this regard till date but the research results are quite at odds. Thus, a modest attempt has been made to scan the information content of EVA and the traditional financial performance measures (ROA, ROCE, ROE, and EPS ) in explaining variations in stock returns that will enable to recognize that whether EVA can be a preferred financial performance measure for investors in evaluating performance of companies while designing investment strategies. Relative information content test as well as incremental information content test approach has been applied here to engulf the problem. Several hypotheses have been tested statistically in order to elucidate the findings and inferences of the study. 50 Indian firms listed in Bombay Stock Exchange for the period from 1st April 2006 to 31st March 2016 have been considered here as sample for conducting the study. Relevant statistical tools and techniques along with specific statistical test such as ‘t’ test, ‘F’ test ,Co-linearity test (VIF) and Akaike information Criterion test (AICc) have also been applied at apt places for analyzing the data used in the study. Relative information content test divulges that EVA has the greatest value-relevance as it possesses the greatest information power in explaining the variations in the stock return followed by ROA, EPS, ROE, and ROCE. Incremental information content test also discloses that EVA adds considerable illustrative power to traditional performance measures.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Growth-Inflation nexus in USA: A Threshold Regression Approach
    (University of North Bengal, 2017-03) Bhowmik, Debesh; Biswas, Debasish; Mitra, Debabrata
    The paper endeavors to find out the nature of inflation of USA during 1961-2015 and to find out the nexus between inflation and growth using Granger causality, Johansen co-integration and vector error correction models. It also showed threshold limit of inflation of 1.75-3.0 per cent in USA using GDP deflator as inflation and taking World Bank Data. It finds one structural break at 1992 and no random walk with drift. Growth inflation nexus is negative. They are co-integrated and showed unidirectional causality. Error correction process is very fast and significant but vector error correction model is stable but divergent. Federal Reserve Bank is in favour of fiscal and monetary policy reforms to curb inflation.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Community Based Tourism: An Analysis of consumer Behaviour
    (University of North Bengal, 2017-03) Mukherjee, Joydeep; Banerjee, Sharmistha
    As one of the global economic success stories, tourism has experienced continued growth to become one of the largest and most competitive economic sectors in the world. But this success has been often counterbalanced by the negative impact of unplanned growth of mass tourism, which jeopardizes the sustainability of environment and damages economic and socio-cultural structure of a region. As a result, academics, practitioners & advocates of sustainable development often propose Eco tourism as the future avenue of the sustainable tourism. At the same time, for Eco tourism to be an ideal instrument for sustainable development, there is a growing need to address the interest and benefits of local communities and their active participation in tourism activities. Like mass tourism also eco tourism treats local communities as passive receiver of tourism impacts rather than active player to be involved and participate in the process of tourism development. So this paper throws light upon a modified version of sustainable eco tourism, community based tourism (CBT), which focuses on the protection of host communities’ socio-cultural values, ensuring their active participation in tourism development, conservation of natural environment along with generating economic benefits. Literature provides that Consumer or tourist behavior is the pivotal point of planning and promotion of any tourism services. Tourists are influenced in their decision making processes by many push and pull motivating factors when they choose their holiday destinations. This paper diagnoses sampled tourists’ behaviour pattern to develop and manage the newly emerged concept of community based tourism. The study has analyzed the tourist behavior pattern to identify the critical factors in developing and managing CBT in a destination. Questionnaire based survey method is used for this purpose.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Day-of-the-Week and Other Market Anomalies in the Indian Stock Market
    (University of North Bengal, 2017-03) Dutta, Abhijit
    The anomalies of the market relating to the calendar period are the source of in-trospection for the efficient market hypothesis. As the market tries to take and as-similate information in the prices, it becomes more efficient and predicting price and tiding over market situation becomes more and more difficult. The fact that market prices are predictable as there are patterns in it, make it non-random and weak. This paper tries to understand in this context the price behaviour of the In-dian stock market and find if the market prices of the calendar event such as day of the week and month of the year has any effect on the Indian stock market. The data for this study consist of NSE data that comprise of weekly data for the period 1995-2015 and daily data for the period 2001-2015. This study indicates that though the Indian market does exhibit seasonality in returns, this seasonality is very different from that observed commonly in other markets.