Online Learning: Challenges and Solutions for Learners and Teachers

The COVID-19 pandemic led to an expansion and increase in the demand for online teaching and learning across the globe. Online teaching and learning is attracting a large number of students for enhanced learning experiences. However, there are many challenges and hindrances that pose a problem in the smooth learning. The impediments in the learning process are suppressing the advantages that may aid the learners with augmented learning sessions. The article presents some challenges faced by teachers and learners, supplemented with the recommendations to remove them. JEL Code: A20

What Determines Profitability in the Indian Automobile Industry?

This study tends to examine the firm-level profitability determinants of Indian automobile and ancillary industry which is recognised for its global competitiveness. The study uses recent dataset to investigate the firm-level profitability determinants in the Indian automobile and ancillary industry and records the effect of shifts in profitability due to change in economic environment. This study intends at using real financial balanced panel data for a period 1999–2019 and applies the two-step system generalised method of moments regression model with robust standard errors. The study has found that lagged profitability, marketing and advertising intensity, firm’s market power and operational efficiency have exercised positive impact on firm-level profitability. Negative and statistically significant impact of raw material import intensity and export intensity highlights the need of planning and implementation of appropriate investment strategies. The findings of this study suggest that firms should pay more attention to optimise their operating expenditures, marketing and advertisement expenditures and expand their market power as a part of their survival and growth strategy. JEL Code: L25

Ecuador: Procesos Contemporáneos de Reforma y Mejora Regulatoria del Mercado

RESUMEN: A lo largo de la historia republicana ecuatoriana se han desarrollado importantes procesos de reformas normativas con la intención de introducir mejoras regulatorias en el mercado. Para implementar estas en el marco normativo nacional se deben considerar su estructura de incentivos y costos sociales para facilitar un prototipo de “diseño” eficaz que prevea por ejemplo, trámites y servicios simplificados, es decir, con un bajo costo de oportunidad social. Por ello, este artículo se enfoca en el análisis ius-económico cualitativo (teórico y conceptual) de instituciones jurídicas contemporáneas como el régimen de concentraciones, el concurso preventivo, el pacto entre accionistas, el buen gobierno corporativo y de aquellas barreras legales que pueden entorpecer la necesaria mejora regulatoria. JEL Code: K, K0

Economic Growth and Quality Adjusted Human Capital Equation: Moderating Role of Social Capabilities in Africa

The role of human capital on economic growth across countries has over time garnered lots of discussion in economic literature. This is fundamental, given that the actual determinant of the difference in income per capita across countries or why some countries are growing faster than other countries has remained an unresolved issue. This study provide a different insight into the nexus between human capital and economic growth by accounting for the role of social capabilities in a panel framework. Specifically, the study covers 40 African countries between 1998-2019, where General Method of Moment (GMM) was employed to estimate the model. Specifically, it was discovered that without improved legal institution and better economic opportunities, human capital impact on the growth of income per capita across countries is insignificant though positive. The study concludes that the effectiveness of knowledge accumulation and adoption of technology in a country is hinged on the availability of enhanced legal, social, and economic environment.JEL CODE: A3, D83, E24, F63, I2

Do institutions matter for tourism spending?

Institutional frameworks are important for individuals’ attitudes and behaviours, and thus they are important for travel decisions. This study endeavours to examine the influence of various formal and informal institutional factors on tourism spending for a global sample of 120 countries from 2002 to 2019. Applying the two-step system generalised method of moments estimate, the results are robust and consistent. First, informal institutions, that is, colonial history, socialist history, origin of the legal system, religion and language, are important explanatory factors for differences in tourism spending between countries. Second, improvements in formal institutions appear to increase domestic tourism spending while they decrease outbound tourism spending. The results have important policy implications. JEL code: E02, Z30, Z32.

Assessing the Financial Implications of COVID-19 Within the SVAR Framework for Some Asian Countries

This article examines the structural responses of foreign exchange and equity markets to the COVID-19 pandemic in seven Asian countries over its first 4 months (31 December 2019 to 1 May 2020). Marginal effects derived from a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model suggest that a 1% increase in incidence of COVID-19 cases significantly diminished Indonesia’s equity market returns by 4.7%, depreciated the Indian rupee against the US dollar by 4.8%, but improved equity prospects in South Korea by 4.1%. For the other financial markets, the effect of COVID-19 was found to be insignificant. Further, the impulse response analyses imply that the influence of COVID-19 on foreign exchange and equity markets is only transitory in nature. Additional SVAR analysis for India and Indonesia over recent months (2 May 2020 to 22 January 2021) showed that their financial markets remained (or became) resistant to the escalating incidence of COVID-19 inflections and deaths. JEL Code: G15

Impact of Covid-19 on Informal Sector: A Study of Women Domestic Workers in India

The COVID-19 pandemic has left severe impact on livelihood, security and health of informal sector workers, especially domestic workers, majority of whom are women. Being least organised and lacking institutional support, domestic workers are extremely vulnerable to exploitation and human rights violations, and the pandemic has aggravated the situation. Telephonic interviews were conducted with 260 domestic workers from three cities, namely Delhi, Mumbai and Kochi with focus on working conditions, livelihood and household dynamics, health scenario and state support during the pandemic. The data was substantiated with qualitative inputs from in-depth interviews conducted with 12 domestic workers across the cities. In the results, widespread job loss is reported among domestic workers during March–June 2020 along with drastically reduced income and increased workload. About 57% domestic workers reported stigma and discrimination at workplace, and 40% worked without any safety measures. Incidence of domestic violence at home, increased work burden at home, issues in access to health care, etc., were reported. The study findings point out the urgent need to have a national-level policy and state support specifically targeting women domestic workers, without which the situation of poverty, health hazards and social exclusion will continue to exist. JEL Code: J4, J46

Differences, Switches and ‘Consistently Side by Side’: Krishna Bharadwaj and the Sraffian Critique of Economic Theory

The study discusses Krishna Bharadwaj’s elaboration of the Sraffian critique of the currently dominating supply-and-demand equilibrium theories that are based on the marginalist approach by making use of documents from the Sraffa archive. Starting from Krishna Bharadwaj’s astute observation that the law of diminishing returns ‘was the thin end of the wedge by which the marginal analysis was introduced and generalised’ the study is concerned with Sraffa’s critique of the marginalist treatment of intensive diminishing returns and his return to a pre-marginalist and non-mechanical analysis of the intensification of land use. In the opening part of the article, the development of the friendship and collaboration between Piero Sraffa and Krishna Bharadwaj is briefly recalled, based on information provided in the correspondence files and diary entries in Sraffa’s papers. JEL Code: B24, B31, B51

The New Political Economy of the Twenty-First-Century Higher Education

I pose the problems of quality in higher education to be addressed through a bureaucratic, technology-centric and accountability-based framework. It relies heavily on quantitative, information-based and ideal institutional system of higher education. The new political economy of the twenty-first-century higher education creates the balance of power in favour of state and utilises the individual choice and market-based principle of governance. The article argues the alternative in terms of shifting the power in favour of academia. The power of academia shall be realised only if the attention is focussed both on creation as well as the purpose of knowledge in the twenty-first century. Universities need to be hermeneutic for allowing the scope of creative activity and accommodate the voices of marginalised sections. It means practical rationality should guide the academia and administrators of higher education. JEL Code: I2, I28

White Elephants and Other Non-basic Commodities: Piero Sraffa and Krishna Bharadwaj on the Role and Significance of the Distinction between Basics and Non-basics

After the publication of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities ( Sraffa, 1960 ), a lot of attention was devoted to ‘reswitching’, that is to the fact that a technique is cost-minimising at two disconnected ranges of the rate of profits and not so in between these ranges. We owe Krishna Bharadwaj (1970, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Volkswirtschaft und Statistik, 106, 409–429) an important contribution to the debate by stating and proving a general result concerning the maximum number of switches between two techniques that have at least one switch point on the wage-frontier. She proved that the maximum number of switches coincides with the number of distinct commodities, without double counting, that enter directly or indirectly into at least one of the alternative methods of production. This means that if the alternative methods produce a commodity that is basic in both techniques, then non-basics in both techniques play no role in this, whereas if the alternative methods produce a non-basic commodity in at least one technique, then a role is played also by those non-basics that enter directly or indirectly into the production of at least one of the alternative methods of production. JEL Code: B12, B21, B31, B51, D24, D51