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Public Investment and Education Inequality
-- Berardino Cesi
Theory fails to predict clearly whether a greater public investment in the higher
education system effectively decreases the inequality between the educational attainment of rich
and poor students. It is assumed that a rich student enrolled at
a university receives a monetary transfer from his parents and allocates it between private consumption and investment
in private education. When private and public educational investments are
substituted, it is found that a further public investment narrows the educational gap. This result is due to the
behavior of rich households. Once public investment has increased, rich students and their
parents reduce private investments and monetary
transfer, respectively; this allows the education
of the poor student to increase more than the education of the rich one. This result also
holds under weak complementarity.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Government-Sponsored Development Programs for Rural India: A Case Study of SGSY in Orissa
-- Sanjay Kumar Lenka and Amaresh Samantaraya
Notwithstanding India's impressive economic performance in the
post-reform period, it is widely believed that there has not been adequate trickle down of
benefits to rural India. Acknowledging the limitations of the conventional market forces for
economic uplifting of the disadvantaged sections of the society, the government has been proactive
in bringing them into mainstream through the implementation of special schemes. This
paper evaluates the impact of one such scheme, Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY).
Based on primary data on various economic indicators of tribal households in Koraput District
of Orissa, it was observed that the stated objectives of the program are not adequately
met. Particularly, the sample beneficiaries have marginally gained in terms of better
employment opportunities, while benefits in terms of real income and expenditure were very modest.
This underscores the need for redesigning and enlarging the scope of the government-run
programs in terms of promoting active involvement of beneficiaries, removing institutional
bottlenecks, better information dissemination, and provision of basic infrastructure for transportation,
storage and marketing of the finished products. Probably, more autonomy to district-level
authorities in design and implementation of such development programs, keeping in mind the region
specific needs and prospects, would be very effective.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Non-Keynesian Effects
of Fiscal Expansions in Israel
-- Yaron Zelekha
The unique characteristics of the fiscal policy in Israel that created one of the largest
public sectors assumed many similarities to the characteristics described in the economic literature
as related to non-Keynesian effects. The results point indeed to significant asymmetrical
negative effect of public consumption on product in Israel that exists even in minor fiscal changes and
has long-term effects. Against this background emerges the possibility of considerable
unutilized potential growth in Israel, which can be realized by means of drastic contraction of public
spending and of tax burden to proportions acceptable in the West.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Factors Affecting Commercial Bank Lending Practices in the
Malaysian Farm Sector
-- Mohamad Iruwan bin Ghuslan,
Junaina Muhammad
and Sazali Zainal Abidin
This study examines lending practices of Malaysian commercial banks in the agricultural
sector. Specifically, this study intends to analyze the relationship between bank lending practices
such as credit analysis, collateral policy and pricing policy to the agriculture sector. This study
uses Spearman's rank order correlation to analyze the relationship between bank lending
practices. Respondents from 202 bank branches are randomly selected from peninsular Malaysia.
The results of the non-parametric test show that there is a significant relationship between
credit analysis, collateral policy and bank lending practices in the agriculture sector. However,
contrary to the expectation, the findings show that there is an insignificant relationship between
pricing policy and bank lending practices.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Weak-Form Market Efficiency in India and Its Emerging Asian Counterparts
-- B J Queensly Jeyanthi
The majority of efficient market research has focused on the major US and European
securities market. Very few research studies have investigated the markets of developing and
less-developed countries. In this study, the existence of weak-form efficiency of Asian emerging stock markets
is analyzed. The sample includes the daily price indices namely China (SSEC), Indonesia
(JKSE), Kuala Lumpur (KLSE), Korea (KS11), Taiwan (TWII) and India (Nifty) for the period of April
1, 1998 to March 31, 2009. The hypothesis of the study is whether the Asian emerging stock
market is weak-form efficient. The results of Kolmogrov-Smirnov normality test and run
test, autocorrelation test and Ljung-Box (LB) test provide evidence that the share return series do
not follow random walk model and the significant autocorrelation coefficient at different lags
reject the null hypothesis of weak-form efficiency. But the unit root hypothesis provides
sufficient evidence that stock prices of Asian emerging markets follow random walk process. On the
basis of the unit root test (non-stationarity) it can be concluded that the Asian emerging markets
are weak-form efficient. This research enables the security analysts, investors and security
exchange regulatory bodies to make policy decisions and to improve the market condition.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
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