Pritish Kumar Sahu

The effect of military expenditure on stock market development: panel evidence from system GMM estimates

This paper examines the impact of military expenditure on stock market development in 36 countries over the period 1989–2010. Within a panel framework, the system GMM estimates is utilised to test the relationship with an array of control variables. We augment the traditional measure of military expenditure–military burden, with a newly constructed comprehensive index – Global Militarisation Index. Overall, the results show that military spending has a negative and significant effect on stock market performance in the selected countries.

Does Higher Productivity and Efficiency Lead to Spillover?: Evidence from Indian Manufacturing

This paper empirically analyzes spillover effects from foreign direct investment using the firm level panel data of Indian manufacturing during 2000–01 and 2009–10. It first estimates the productivity and efficiency of the domestic and foreign firms separately before examining the spillover effects by using PROWESS dataset. The use of the Cobb-Douglas production function for productivity and stochastic frontier approach for efficiency reveals higher productivity and efficiency of the foreign firms over their domestic counterparts. Similarly, the findings show a significant impact of FDI on output growth. This indicates that any increase in foreign equity at the firm and sector level directly affects productivity. We attempt to find the possible reason for positive spillover effects by analyzing the detail of the present trends and the dataset.

Prediction of Financial Distress for Electricity Sectors Using Data Mining

This article addresses the financial aspects surrounding the stability of the electricity sector. We apply a variety of data mining techniques to build financial distress warning models based on the financial statement analysis method. The analysis reveal that neural networks with the accuracy of 80% and above in different scenarios were found to be relatively more accurate compared to decision trees and support vector machines. Additionally, in order to assess the ability of financial indicators, we applied feature selection. The financial ratios analyses proved the significance of profitability, liquidity and financial leverage for the default prediction models. Therefore, it is exigent that companies utilize their assets, liquidity and solvency as the core of their management policy regulations. The key contribution of this paper is the formulation of a proper model for financial distress prediction among electricity sector companies in Iran.

Globalisation and its effect on pollution in Malaysia: the role of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement

The main objective of this study is to investigate the influence of the globalisation (Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement in particular) on air pollution in Malaysia. To achieve this goal, the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model, Johansen cointegration test and fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS) methods are utilised. CO2 emission is used as an indicator of pollution while GDP per capita and urbanisation serve as its other determinants. In addition, this study uses Malaysia’s total trade with 10 TPP members as an indicator of globalisation and analyse its effect on CO2 emission in Malaysia. The outcome of this research shows that the variables are cointegrated. Additionally, GDP per capita, urbanisation and trade between Malaysia and its 10 TPP partners have a positive impact on CO2 emissions in general. Based on the outcome of this research, important policy implications are provided for the investigated country.

Impact of Remittances on Poverty in India: Empirical Evidence

Remittances have been an important source of external funding for India. The span of Indian diaspora stretches across the globe in all continents. The Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs has registered the presence of non-resident Indians (NRIs) in 180 of the 183 countries of the world. The numbers have varied from just two in Lebanon to almost a million in the USA. Estimated at over 30 million, India ranks second to Chinese diaspora. The growing number of migrants from India has added to the remittance inflow over the years. Data in this regard reveals that, even though the remittance flows to the Indian economy during the 1980s remained more or less stable, the postreform period from 1991 onwards has experienced a significant increase in remittances. There has been an annual average trend growth of 16 % during the period 1990 to 2008. In 2008, after the outbreak of economic crisis, India reported 34 % growth over 2007.