Subash Sasidharan

The objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between the central bank's daily money market operations in the form of Term Repo and Term Reverse Repo operations on stock returns using daily data. Unlike earlier studies, we use two new monetary measures, namely, Repo Spread and Reverse Repo Spread. Controlling for firm-specific factors and time dummies and addressing endogeneity issue, we show that the central bank's money market operations have a significant effect on daily returns. Further, we also observe that the inclusion of these monetary variables improves the prediction of the stock returns.

This paper investigates the relationship between the volatility of government bond yields and liquidity using daily data. We introduce a novel measure of liquidity called Repo Spread created from Reserve Bank of India's recent liquidity operation called Term Repo Operation. The result indicates that liquidity variable has significant explanatory power on the volatility of security yields. Further, we find Repo Spread has significant predictive power on the volatility of government security yields.

Using a rich firm-level data set pertaining to 80 countries, this paper investigates the relationship between institutional gender equality and financial constraints on female-led firms. We employ a broad index of gender inequality as well as alternate measures in terms of economic, educational, and political inequality. We observe that institutional gender equality benefits female entrepreneurs’ access to finance. In addition, in a gender-equal environment, we observe that female-owned and female-managed firms are less likely to be discouraged from applying for formal finance. We find these effects are more pronounced in the case of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and young firms. Further, our results suggest that economic, educational, and political gender equality is vital to improving women enterprises’ access to external finance.

The coronavirus disease 2019 has severely affected the financially constrained small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In response, various countries employed several policies to support SMEs. Using rich firm-level data from 34 countries, we study the impact of the pandemic-led crisis on cash-strapped SMEs and the role of governments in offsetting losses. Our results suggest that (i) government support programmes target mostly financially constrained firms; (ii) firms adjustments to the pandemic are associated with the likelihood of government support; (iii) financially constrained firms are more likely to lay off workers; and (iv) financially constrained firms layoff more male employees than female employees.

The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, we empirically investigate the role of financial constraints on innovation activities. Second, we examine the significance of non-financial support provided by government on firm innovation. We employ firm-level survey data over the period 2006–2017 for 100 countries. Based on the direct indicators of financial constraints, different estimation methods and addressing the endogeneity concerns, we document that financial constraints have a significant negative impact on firms’ innovation activities. Further, we find a positive correlation between government support and the innovative activities of small-medium enterprises; and the impact is more pronounced in the case of financially unconstrained firms.

The aim of this study is three-fold: first, to examine the relationship between government support and E-commerce adoption. Second, to investigate the nexus between government support and firm innovation. Third, to explore the relation of firm performance with E-commerce adoption and innovation. Using firm-level data from 31 countries during the time of COVID-19 pandemic, we find both E-commerce adoption and innovation are positively associated with government support. Further, we also find that such firms register significantly higher sales growth. The result remains consistent even after addressing the endogeneity issue. These results hold for the subsample of SMEs as well.

This paper investigates the impact of central bank's liquidity operations on the financial constraints of the bank-dependent firms. We use the Reserve Bank of India's liquidity operation called Term Repo Operation (TRO) in the study. The empirical analysis is based on a large scale firm-level data for the period 2011–2016 and panel logit estimation method. Our findings indicate that the financial constraints of the bank-dependent firms have reduced than their counterparts since the introduction of the operation. We also show that larger firms reap significant benefit out of TRO than the smaller firms.

The objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between innovation and firms’ participation in global value chains (GVCs). To achieve this objective, we use rich firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES), spanning the period of 2006–2017, belonging to 90 countries. Accounting for endogeneity arising from reverse causality, our study finds firm innovation to be a driver of firm GVC participation across countries. These findings are robust to alternative measures of innovation and various sub-sample analysis.