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Purpose Internationalization is an important strategy for the long-term survivability of the firms and is often influenced by the ownership groups along with the family involvement in the management decisions. The purpose of this study is to investigate empirically the outward propensities of various ownership groups such as foreign institutional investors, domestic mutual funds and lending institutions. Design/methodology/approach This paper analyzes the moderating effects of the family’s influence on the relationship between various ownership categories and internationalization, which is measured in terms of foreign investments and export intensity. An analysis of listed non-financial Indian firms recorded during the years 2005–2019, constituting a panel of 43,928 firm-year observations was conducted by using the tobit and probit panel regression models. Findings The results demonstrate that internationalization of the firm is positively impacted by the foreign institutional investors and lending institutions. However, when the family ownership is moderated across the ownership categories, it can be seen that it negatively impacts the lending institutions and positively impacts the foreign institutional investors. In the case of mutual funds, no impact of family ownership in the firm’s foreign investment decisions can be seen. Originality/value As there are limited studies about family ownership influence on the firm’s internationalization decision in the context of India, this paper takes an inclusive approach to the changing nature of the influence of ownership on the international expansion process.

Purpose The preference of firm corporate social responsibility (CSR) spending is shaped by different groups of owners and the institutional environment in which the firm operates. This paper aims to study the heterogeneity among the controlling groups and firms’ internationalization in influencing the CSR decision in emerging economy firms. Design Methodology Approach This paper draws understanding from institutional theory to inspect the propensities of various ownership groups such as lending institutions (LI), domestic mutual funds (MF) and foreign institutional investors (FIIs). The empirical analysis was conducted from a sample of 1,594 unique Bombay stock exchange (BSE)-listed non-financial Indian firms during the 2014–2019 period using Tobit panel regression analysis. Findings The findings reveal that firms’ CSR activities are impacted differently by ownership share of different types of institutional investors after controlling for firm-level resources and capabilities. Lending institutions, FIIs and MF are supportive of CSR investments by firms along with international investments by the firm. Further, the results show that the CSR spend is positively influenced by the business group affiliation of the firm compared to the unaffiliated group of firms. Practical Implications The analysis has implications for both institutional investors and multinational firms. In the merging market context, managers and owners who target long term strategies such as CSR will benefit from increasing shareholdings of creditors (lending institutions). They can also take steps to improve their transparency and corporate governance structure so as to attract foreign institutional investments, thus, in turn, helping the internationalization process of the firm. Originality Value This paper considers the role of the diverseness of the ownership institutional investors along with the moderating effect of business group affiliation of the firm and international investments in impacting the CSR spend. This disparity has not been previously studied with the latest data in an emerging economy context.

Food price fluctuations can impact both producers and consumers. Forecasting the prices of the agricultural commodities is of prime concern not only to the government but also to farmers and agribusiness firms. In developing countries like India, manage

PurposeInnovation strategy and its outcomes may be different for agricultural input firms in developing countries than those operating in developed countries; hence, a study of developing economy should be an important addition to the literature which has earlier focussed mainly on developed countries. Indian firms which were previously catering to domestic demand are now the exporters of major agricultural machinery such as tractors and pesticides.Design/methodology/approachRapid growth in demand for the agricultural inputs and improvement in technology implementations have led us to study the performance and transformation of these input industries. An empirical analysis was performed on the listed agricultural input firms during 2001–2019 to investigate the relationship between the R&D efforts and growth of firms in the seed, pesticide, fertiliser and agricultural machinery industries using the system-generalised methods of moments (GMM) technique on the panel of 1,320 firm-year observations.FindingsThe findings reveal that investments in innovations have a positive and lagged effect on the growth of firms in the Indian agricultural inputs industry. A further analysis reveals that younger firms grow faster when they invest in R&D. More specifically, the author finds evidence in the case of the agricultural inputs industry that import of raw materials negatively affects the firms' growth (FG) and export intensity (EI) positively affects the growth in the case of R&D firms. Investments in R&D are also seen to enable firms to reap benefits from externalities present in the industry.Research limitations/implicationsThis study suggests that the government should encourage the industries to invest optimally in R&D projects by providing favourable fiscal treatments and R&D subsidies which are observed to have positive effects in various developed countries.Originality/valueThere are very few studies that have explored the impact of R&D expenditure on the firm performance in agricultural inputs industry, especially in an emerging economy context like India.

PurposePrice discovery and spillover effect are prominent indicators in the commodity futures market to protect the interest of consumers, farmers and to hedge sharp price fluctuations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate empirically the price discovery and volatility spillover in Indian agriculture spot and futures commodity markets.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses Granger causality, vector error correction model (VECM) and exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (EGARCH) to examines the price discovery and spillover effects for nine most liquid agricultural commodities in spot and futures markets traded on National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX).FindingsThe VECM results show that price discovery exists in all the nine commodities with futures market leading the spot in case of six commodities, namely soybean seed, coriander, turmeric, castor seed, guar seed and chana. Whereas in case of three commodities (cotton seed, rape mustard seed and jeera), price discovery takes place in the spot market. The Granger causality tests indicate that futures markets have stronger ability to predict spot prices. Supporting these, the results from EGARCH volatility test reveal that there exist mutual spillover effects on futures and spot markets. Thus, it could be inferred that futures market is more efficient in price discovery of agricultural commodities in India.Research limitations/implicationsThese results can help the market participants to benefit by hedging out the uncertainty and the policymakers to design futures contracts to improve the efficiency of the agricultural commodity derivatives market.Practical implicationsThe findings provide fresh view on lead–lag relationship between future and spot prices using the latest data confirming that futures market indeed is dominant in price discovery.Originality/valueThere are very few studies that have explored the efficiency of the agricultural commodity spot and futures markets in India using both price discovery and volatility spillover in a detailed manner, especially at the individual agriculture commodity level.

This paper aims to provide an analysis of the agricultural productivity of food grains across the states of India. Despite agriculture's diminishing role as a share of overall gross domestic product (GDP) in India, it plays a crucial role by providing a large proportion of jobs to the workforce. Acknowledging the central role of agriculture in the economy as well as the diversity between the states in terms of availability of resources, this study analyses the impact of various inputs like land area, fertilizers, electricity and labour use on the production efficiency of food grains at the state level from 2006 to 2017 using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI). The results highlight the variation in the performance of states with five out of selected 20 states experiencing efficiency under the CCR model of DEA and nine out of 20 states being efficient under the BCC model of DEA. MPI results indicate that 11 out of 20 states have progressed in terms of MPI during the period under consideration. The paper highlights the possibility of increasing agricultural production with optimizing the inputs by focusing on efficient resource deployment and enhanced production management. The paper investigates the relationship between various agricultural inputs and food grain production efficiency using DEA and provides a way to improve on the allocation of these resources across various Indian states.

Purpose Previous studies have examined the relationship between institutional investors and corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement primarily for the case of developed nations. The purpose of this paper is to look at the association between different ownership categories and CSR spending of selected Indian firms within an emerging market context. Design/methodology/approach This study examines the motivations that guide the CSR strategies of different ownership groups. Random-effects Tobit panel regression is performed on a panel of BSE-listed non-financial Indian firms panel comprising of 5,313 firm year observations over a six-year period (2014-2019). Findings Heterogeneous behavior of institutional investors is revealed through the study. Different categories of institutional investors have different preferences for CSR spending of a firm. Lending institutes and foreign institutional investors (FIIs) are seen to support the CSR investments. However, mutual fund investors are seen to not influence the CSR spend by the firms. Further, the results show that family ownership, measured in terms of family shareholding, positively moderates the lending institutions and mutual funds toward CSR and does not impact the FIIs decision regarding the CSR investments. Practical implications The analysis has implications for both institutional investors and multinational firms. In the emerging market context, managers and owners who target long term strategies such as CSR, will benefit from increasing shareholdings of creditors (lending institutions). They can also take steps to improve their transparency and corporate governance structure so as to attract the foreign institutional investments. Originality/value Managers cannot ignore the heterogeneities of institutional investors in their investment decisions and hence CSR decisions need to align with those of different types of investors. This study adds to the existing literature by offering new empirical insights from the perspective of an emerging market, India.