This paper assesses the convergence of COVID-19 cases by obtaining transition paths of Indian states covering the period from August 01 to October 31, 2020. The results based on Phillips-Sul test show evidence of different transition paths. These findings are useful from the policy perspective, particularly to see whether existing efforts made for stopping the spread of COVID-19 by states/central governments are effective. • Convergence of COVID-19 cases across Indian states is investigated. • The Phillips and Sul test is applied. • Findings are in favour of different transition paths. © 2020

Although several studies explored the issue of CO2/Ecological footprint convergence across the countries, study on biomass material footprint (BMF) convergence is scant. This study bridges this research gap by examining the “BMF convergence hypothesis” across 172 countries for the period from 1990 to 2017. To attain our objective, we use the novel Phillips and Sul (J Appl Econom 24(7):1153–1185, 2007a; Econometrica 75:1771–1855, 2007b) approach. We find that there is no evidence of convergence, while 172 countries are taken together. This implies that all the countries together are having different transition paths. Thus, Phillips and Sul test implements the clustering algorithms to identify the club convergence. Our results show the existence of six different steady-state (or club convergence) equilibriums for BMF. Thus, our findings show that climate change policies are required to be designed as per the existing clubs of the sample countries. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE part of Springer Nature.

While the bulk of the studies in India examine the convergence of per-capita income or expenditures, we investigate whether there is any evidence of convergence of government revenues and its various compositions by focusing a panel of 22 Indian states for the periods 1980–81 to 2014–15. To answer this question, the present study employs Phillips and Sul panel club convergence technique. The results find evidence of a single club convergence in the case of total revenues and revenues collected in the revenue account. Further, our results also reveal the presence of three-club convergence when we disaggregate the gross revenues into capital receipts and state-owned tax-revenue. From the policy perspective, it is important for the Central government to integrate all states in revenues collection through tax devolution formula and grants-in-aid. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand, among the emotional, practical and logical factors, which factor is more critical while consumers buy organic food products, mostly fruits and vegetables. Design/methodology/approach: A self-administered questionnaire survey approach was used to provide a deeper insight into the reasons for consumers to buy organic fruits and vegetables (OF&V). A total of 632 valid questionnaires were obtained, yielding a response rate of 79%. Findings: Health is a functional/practical factor which consumer expect as a result of consuming organic food products; however, fear towards conventional food products (emotional) is the triggering factor which motivates consumers to buy OF&V. The logical factor such as environmental motive was found insignificant in the current study, Thereby supporting the value theory which posited emotion greater than practical and which in turn greater than logical. However, barriers for consumers to buy OF&V are perceived price and willingness to take effort. Thus by focusing upon fear reducing strategy such as, implementing certification and labelling on OF&V would be a promising strategy. Originality/value: To the authors' knowledge, no previous studies exist in the organic consumer behaviour research which used the value theory proposed by Mattson (1991) and the study was able to propose that beyond the practical and logical factors, emotional factor has important role while consumer think of buying OF&V. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Purpose: Owing to the significant and critical role of ethical leadership in organizations, this study aims to explore and understand the perceptions about ethical leadership in organizations. It empirically investigates whether the individual attributes of gender, age, work experience, executive level and qualification of members and other demographic variables, such as industry and sector, affect the perception of members toward ethical conduct of their supervisors. Design/methodology/approach: This is a quantitative study where the analysis is based on the data collected from 419 members of 3 different industries, namely, public sector research and development organizations, information technology organizations and academic universities and colleges. Findings: The results reveal that perception of ethical leadership does not vary across gender and qualification of members but varies across age, work experience, management level, industry and sector. Practical implications: This study helps to understand the importance and role of various individual attributes that affect the perception of ethical leadership by followers. This study will make leaders to be more aware and behave in ethical manner with respect to different groups of followers. Originality/value: Because of occurrence of many scandals and fraudulent behaviors in organizations, business ethics has caught the attention of policy makers, corporate organizations and academic. Ethical leadership is very crucial for organizational success on a sustainable basis. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is among the early studies conducted to investigate the influence of the individual attributes and other demographic variables on the perception of members toward ethical conduct of their supervisors. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Purpose: This paper aims at identifying the antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions among females in India using the theory of planned behaviour. Design/methodology/approach: This study is based on the Adult Population Survey (APS) of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), which has covered 1,683 female respondents from India. The data has been analysed using simple techniques such as chi-square statistics and logistics regression. The antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions have been identified using the theory of planned behaviour. Findings: About 20% of the adult females have reported intention for starting an entrepreneurial venture in the country. A significant relationship emerged between the demographics of females with and without intention towards entrepreneurship. The results showed that there is a positive and significant effect of attitudes towards the behaviour, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control to the entrepreneurial intentions among females. Practical implications: This paper provides insights on factors affecting entrepreneurial intention among females and helps in developing a policy framework for promoting new ventures among female entrepreneurs. This also explores the possibility of future research on entrepreneurial intention in the Indian context. Originality/value: Considering the current focus of the government in India for promoting new ventures, this piece of research can be valuable for different stakeholders in adopting a gender-based approach in implementing inclusive entrepreneurial initiatives. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.

A lot has been discussed about the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the existing studies; the study on the club convergence of GHG emissions is limited particularly for the agriculture sector. This study tries to investigate the convergence hypothesis across 93 countries spanning 1980–2017. To examine the convergence hypothesis, we implement the novel Phillips and Sul test. Results obtained from this test show the evidence of divergence when we consider all 93 countries as a group. This implies that GHG emissions across the countries are following different convergence paths. To capture this, we further apply clustering algorithms and results show the existence of five clubs of convergence and one group stating the need for altering the policies at the club level to achieve a single steady state in GHG emissions. Moreover, our findings recommend that the mitigation policies should be considered in the presence of different clubs of regions with different convergence paths in terms of GHG emissions and account for the distributional effect of transfers across countries. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.

Online learning environments (OLE) continue to expand due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the transition of a majority of educational institutions and universities worldwide from traditional classroom settings to online learning methods. The purpose of this study was to understand the perceptions of learners at a university in India toward the sudden transition from traditional face-to-face learning to an instructor-led OLE due to the pandemic-induced lockdown enforced across India in March 2020. Using a qualitative case study approach, structured interviews were conducted via Microsoft Teams with 35 learners from Savitribai Phule Pune University, a large public university in India. Interviews comprised eight open-ended questions, which were validated by experts. Results indicate that learners accepted the transition toward the OLE. Five key themes arose from the interview data: accessibility and comfort, Internet connectivity, OLE effectiveness, course content, and interactions between students and instructors. The study provides insights to the researchers with the emergent themes from the research. Also, it carries practical implications concerning implications regarding infrastructure readiness for remote learners, acceptance, and adoption of OLEs by faculty instructors, organizational support, and facilitating conditions. © 2021

Water quality is continuously changing because of anthropogenic origin of point and diffuses (non-point) pollution sources. Most of the time diffuse sources are not considered for rationalization of sampling sites as their accurate estimation is tedious and data intensive. The estimation of diffuse pollution is conventionally carried out using observed water quality data. These conventional approaches are data intensive and demands detailed information for a considerably long-time horizon and hence becomes challenging to implement in data-scarce regions. Also, diffuse pollution sources are characterized by spatio-temporal heterogeneity as they depend upon seasonal behavior of precipitation. The present study proposes an innovative semi-empirical approach of Seasonal Export Coefficients (SECs) for estimation of diffuse pollution loads, especially for tropical countries like India. This approach takes into account the effect of seasonality on the estimation of diffuse pollution loads, by considering seasonal heterogeneity of terrain and precipitation impact factors and land use applications. This seasonal heterogeneity is then tested for its possible impact on rationalization of water quality monitoring locations for Kali River basin in India. The SECs are estimated for available water quality dataset of 1999–2000 and are further used for simulation of nutrient loading for experimental years 2004–2005, 2009–2010, and 2014–2015. The resulting SECs for Kali river basin are: 2.03 (agricultural), 1.44 (fallow), and 0.92 (settlement) for monsoonal nitrate; while for non-monsoonal nitrate, SECs are 0.51 (agricultural), 0.23 (fallow), and 0.10 (settlement). The monsoonal phosphate SECs for land use classes - agricultural, fallow and settlement are 1.01, 0.68, and 0.25, while non-monsoonal phosphate SECs are 0.27, 0.14 and, 0.03 respectively. The seasonal variation of diffuse pollution sources is effectively captured by SECs. The proposed approach, by considering both point and diffuse pollution, is found efficient in determining optimum locations and number of monitoring sites where seasonal variations are found evident during experimental years. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

The present study investigates the impact of advertisement authenticity and the role of various latent variables in determining customers' pro-environmental behavior. Data have been collected from 731 respondents belonging to the North Indian region through a convenience sampling technique. Structural equation modeling technique has been employed to measure the impact of identified dimensions on customers' pro-environmental behavior. The study results validated that pro-environmental behavior is significantly determined by advertisement authenticity, trustworthiness, threat appeal, environmental threat appeals, and perceived severity. The findings further provide substantial insights that validate the use of threat appeal in green advertising, thus enabling the advertisers, marketers, and government agencies to develop robust and effective marketing strategies for promoting the use of eco-friendly products. © 2021 W. Michael Hoffman Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University

By providing empirical evidence, the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on the agricultural market operations of the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir is analysed. Mandi operations in terms of market arrivals have been found to be higher during the lockdown phases, and the market operations seem to have moved towards normal from Phase 1 to Phase 4 of the lockdown. The administration of Jammu and Kashmir showed a rapid response in the revival of mandi operations for the benefit of the farming communities as well as the consumers. © 2020 Economic and Political Weekly. All rights reserved.

The rapid growth of Tamilnadu sub-urban population has put enormous efforts on all modes of transportation systems, particularly the bus transportation. The increasing population far exceeds the limited supply of transport infrastructure and services. Mostly, traveling on a public bus and train services are overcrowded, undependable, slow, inconvenient, uncoordinated, and dangerous. Tamilnadu sub-urban desperately needs to improve and expand private transportation services to improve passengers’ satisfaction. In this paper, we have presented a multi-criteria decision-making approach for selecting the best private bus operators in Tamilnadu, the southern part of India. The evaluation has been made based on six criteria, twenty-eight sub-criteria, and eight private bus operators as alternatives. © 2020, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

This paper aims to investigate whether COVID-19 pandemic causes the spot electricity price discovery of the Indian electricity market. To do so, we use the average daily spot electricity price data for five regions of the Indian electricity market (North, East, West, South, and North-East). The data is considered from March 15, 2020 to May 02, 2020. The results obtained from cross-sectional augmented Im, Pesaran and Shin (CIPS) unit root test show the stationary of spot electricity price and COVID-19 at the level. Additionally, we use the Dumitrescu–Hurlin (DH) panel causality test to examine the causality between spot electricity price and COVID-19. The results reveal the unidirectional causality which is running from COVID-19 to the spot electricity price discovery but no other way around. Our findings suggests to the policymakers that across different regions of India (North, East, West, South, and North-East), the ongoing coronavirus outbreak will further disrupt the electricity market. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

In this study, we examine the role of export diversification in the convergence of per capita income (output). By applying the dynamic system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator to a panel dataset consisting of 95 countries, we find evidence of both absolute and conditional divergence for the full sample and the subsamples based on income and regions. Thus, our findings suggest that, although high export diversification boosts the per capita income (output), it does not significantly reduce per capita income (output) gap between rich and poor countries. © 2020 Commentarii Mathematici Helvetici. All rights reserved.

In this study, we examine the role of export diversification in the convergence of per capita income (output). By applying the dynamic system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator to a panel dataset consisting of 95 countries, we find evidence of both absolute and conditional divergence for the full sample and the subsamples based on income and regions. Thus, our findings suggest that, although high export diversification boosts the per capita income (output), it does not significantly reduce per capita income (output) gap between rich and poor countries. © 2020 Commentarii Mathematici Helvetici. All rights reserved.

Brand Equity erosion due to non-consumer franchise building (non-CFB) sales promotions have been a recurring theme in extant literature. However, the disproportionate increase in non- CFB promotion activities by companies contradicts this academic view. This research provides a rationale for this inconsistency by examining the moderating impact of brand loyalty on the promotion–brand equity relationship. Results indicate that loyalty moderates the promotion-brand equity relationship, and even short term promotions enhance brand equity in certain market segments (like those dominated by spurious loyals). Practitioners can target specific loyalty groups through short term promotions without impacting Brand Equity. © 2020, © 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

The paper intends to evaluate the facility layout design (FLD) models using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method. FLD focuses on streamlining the workflow and increasing productivity. This study examines how the model can help to find out the optimum layout to improve the production metrics through improving operations and the working environment attributes. In this study, seven layout designs have been discussed under critical parameters of optimal layouts such as cost (operation and flexibility) and working environment (safety, facilities, and control). This case study FLD conducted in national sorting hub, Mangalore, and Karnataka State in the southern part of India. Empirical results show that the AHP method is one of the promising ways to solve the FLD problem. © 2019, The Society for Reliability Engineering, Quality and Operations Management (SREQOM), India and The Division of Operation and Maintenance, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden.

Purpose: Owing to the significant and critical role of ethical leadership in organizations, this study aims to explore and understand the perceptions about ethical leadership in organizations. It empirically investigates whether the individual attributes of gender, age, work experience, executive level and qualification of members and other demographic variables, such as industry and sector, affect the perception of members toward ethical conduct of their supervisors. Design/methodology/approach: This is a quantitative study where the analysis is based on the data collected from 419 members of 3 different industries, namely, public sector research and development organizations, information technology organizations and academic universities and colleges. Findings: The results reveal that perception of ethical leadership does not vary across gender and qualification of members but varies across age, work experience, management level, industry and sector. Practical implications: This study helps to understand the importance and role of various individual attributes that affect the perception of ethical leadership by followers. This study will make leaders to be more aware and behave in ethical manner with respect to different groups of followers. Originality/value: Because of occurrence of many scandals and fraudulent behaviors in organizations, business ethics has caught the attention of policy makers, corporate organizations and academic. Ethical leadership is very crucial for organizational success on a sustainable basis. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is among the early studies conducted to investigate the influence of the individual attributes and other demographic variables on the perception of members toward ethical conduct of their supervisors. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Purpose: Owing to the significant and critical role of ethical leadership in organizations, this study aims to explore and understand the perceptions about ethical leadership in organizations. It empirically investigates whether the individual attributes of gender, age, work experience, executive level and qualification of members and other demographic variables, such as industry and sector, affect the perception of members toward ethical conduct of their supervisors. Design/methodology/approach: This is a quantitative study where the analysis is based on the data collected from 419 members of 3 different industries, namely, public sector research and development organizations, information technology organizations and academic universities and colleges. Findings: The results reveal that perception of ethical leadership does not vary across gender and qualification of members but varies across age, work experience, management level, industry and sector. Practical implications: This study helps to understand the importance and role of various individual attributes that affect the perception of ethical leadership by followers. This study will make leaders to be more aware and behave in ethical manner with respect to different groups of followers. Originality/value: Because of occurrence of many scandals and fraudulent behaviors in organizations, business ethics has caught the attention of policy makers, corporate organizations and academic. Ethical leadership is very crucial for organizational success on a sustainable basis. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is among the early studies conducted to investigate the influence of the individual attributes and other demographic variables on the perception of members toward ethical conduct of their supervisors. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

This study examines the impact of contextual factors on brand trust, brand loyalty and cross-buying from the perspective of the bottom of pyramid rural consumers in India. Two important contextual factors – distribution intensity and outshopping orientation – were used as the contextual factors. Effects of distribution intensity in the initiation and maintenance of consumer–brand relationships are first examined. Further, it explores the moderating role of in versus outshopping orientation in the formation and maintenance of long-term relationships between consumers and brands in bottom of pyramid markets. Data collected from 478 consumers in three villages in Gujarat, India, were analysed using structural equation modelling technique to test the hypothesized relationships using IBM AMOS 23 software. Distribution Intensity was found to positively influence brand trust. Brand trust was found to mediate the relationships between distribution intensity and brand loyalty and distribution intensity and cross buying. The importance of distribution intensity in relationship initiation was more pronounced for consumers who shopped from local retailers than those who did not. The study underlines the importance of distribution intensity of brands a relationship-based marketing strategy, especially in those products, where the switching costs are low. This study establishes the role of contextual factors in the formation and maintenance of consumer–brand relationships in the bottom of pyramid markets. © 2020 De Gruyter. All rights reserved.