Anweshan - journal of Department of Commerce

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ANWESHAN is a bi-annual refereed journal of the Department of Commerce, University of North Bengal. Articles are selected through a blind review process.

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2013 - 201939

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 45
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    The Impact of FDI Policy Reforms on The Retail Sector in India
    (University of North Bengal, 2019-03) Lama, Saraswati
    The Indian economy is booming, with an average GDP growth rate of more than 7 per cent (2014- 18) and is expected to be the world’s third largest economy after the USA and China by 2050 (Dadush and Stancil, 2009). India has witnessed a noticeable growth in the organized retail industry after the liberalization of the economy in the early nineties. Healthy economic growth, favourable demographic trends with young and thriving population, increasing disposable incomes, and urbanization are some of the factors driving growth in the organized retail market in India. According to A. T. Kearney’s Annual Global Retail Development Index, 2017, India ranks first among the top 30 emerging markets for retail globally. The present study aims at the investigating current retail scenario in India, analyzing the impact FDI reforms in attracting FDI in retail and evaluating the challenges and threats of FDI in Indian retail industry.
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    Study on The Labour Welfare of Tea Plantations in North Bengal Region
    (University of North Bengal, 2019-03) Roy, Nirmal Chandra; Biswas, Debasish
    Labour is one of the most important assets in any organization for the enhancement of productivity. The concept of ‘labour welfare’ is dynamic. Multifarious dimensions of labour welfare enable labourers to maintain a portly and a comfortable life. Consequently, it leads to higher productivity of labour and proficiency of an enterprise. It also amplifies the value of the existent labourers by circuitously release the compulsion on their purse. The Plantation Labour Act enshrines the welfare of the labourers by way of ensuring facilities such as canteens, crèches, transportation, recreation, education for the children, suitable house accommodation of plantation workers and for their families in and around the work places of plantation, etc. In the present study, a deliberate effort has been drawn up to showcase the existing scenario of labour welfare facilities among the tea estates owned by different tea companies located in the North Bengal region of West Bengal. For the purpose of the study, 33 tea estates have been selected scientifically from the study region. ANOVA technique has been used to analyze the collected data. The study has found the significant imparity based on the labour welfare expenses among tea estates of the study region.
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    Unemployment and Need for Sustainability of Micro, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises in India: A Study
    (University of North Bengal, 2019-03) Dey, Shuvendu; Basu, Analjyoti
    India is developing fast in different fields. Rapid economic development has placed India among the leaders in the world stage. However, to a great extent, growth and development scenario is being disturbed by the unemployment situation in the country. On the economic development front, inequality and increasing unemployment are the biggest challenges for the fast developing nation. Unemployment not only hits the financial and social stability but also reflects waste of productive resources of the country. To combat the situation, the union government has taken several steps. Creating a congenial atmosphere for entrepreneurial activities is one of them. The scholastic fraternity also supports the move for encouraging entrepreneurial activities to fight unemployment. However, the growth of entrepreneurship is not enough for a country. There is also the need for sustainability. The present paper, based on the aforesaid argument, discusses on the issues of government initiative, scholastic view on fighting unemployment, analysis of MSME growth in the country, and the sustainability measures in entrepreneurial growth.
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    Oil Price Shock and Its Effect on Stock Markets of India
    (University of North Bengal, 2019-03) Bagchi, Bhaskar; Mishra, Ansu
    The present study makes an attempt to investigate the effect of sharp continuous surging crude oil price on stock market indices of India, and also the long-term and short term relationships between crude oil prices and stock indices. The ‘period of the study’ spans from July 2009 to December 2016. We have found surge in oil price has positive correlation with equity indices and negative correlation with the exchange rates. The result is suited with the existing economic theory. Multivariate cointegration techniques along with vector error correction mechanism have been applied in the study.
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    Post-Reform Life Insurance Industry in India: A Study on Scale Efficiency
    (University of North Bengal, 2019-03) Sarda, Madhu; Ray, Indrajit
    Indian life insurance industry witnesses a rapid growth during the post-reform period. The current statistics on number of policies and branches, sum assured, premium, share capital, insurance penetration, insurance density etc., show noticeable hike, compared to their respective values at the outset of reform. Also, total fund registers a steep rise with a compound annual growth rate of approximately 17.90% in the last seventeen years. In view of this magnanimous growth of scale, represented here by the summation of total fund and income there from, the present article seeks to measure scale efficiency of the Indian public and private life insurance sectors, both sector-wise and in totality, during the post-reform period. This study applies Econometric Frontier Approach (EFA) to estimate Transcendental Logarithmic (Translog) cost function consisting of one output and two input variables, labour and capital for a time period from 2003-04 to 2017-18. Results on scale efficiency scores of private and public life insurance sectors are 0.274378 and 0.808870 respectively. However, though both the sectors exhibit scale economies, a cautious cost effective policy should be adopted in future by public life insurance sector to raise total fund and to invest them. Indian life insurance industry as a whole portrays huge opportunity to scale-up its total fund as current scale efficiency score is as low as 0.140533.
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    Economic Growth-Inflation Dynamic Trade-Offs in India: Stability Issues and Policy Implications
    (University of North Bengal, 2019-03) Das, Kalyan
    Endogenous and exogenous shocks disrupt macroeconomic stability. Growth, inflation and external balance are used to evaluate macro performance of an economy. Examining the relationship between inflation and gross domestic product (GDP) has long been an important field in macroeconomic research. This paper examines the nature of dynamic trade-offs between inflation and output and their direction of causation in the Indian economy utilizing time series dataset over the period from 1950-51 to 2015-16 employing together with unit root tests, cointegration regression and causality tests. There is strong evidence of their bidirectional causality. The empirical findings help to translate certain important theoretical issues on structural adjustment problems into various policy relevant solutions and interrelationships examining the role and conduct of macroeconomic stabilisation policies with particular emphasis placed on the specific episodes on macroeconomic dips, the existence of recessionary episodes, the counter-cyclical nature of inflation and the sustainability of macroeconomic policies.
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    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.
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    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.
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    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
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    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.