Subrahmanya Kumar N.

Economic growth should be supplemented by an efficient payment and settlement system. Many attempts have been made to improve the efficiency of payment and settlement system in India. Especially the effort has been in terms of promoting digital economy. But the stickiness to payments through currency notes by the people has had a moderating effect on these efforts. The policy shift of Government of India towards demonetization of higher denomination currency notes has given thrust to digital payments. The study hypothesizes that post demonetization, the payment and settlement system indicators would show moderate to high deviation from the volume and value that can be forecasted using the historical data. Using Automatic ARIMA Forecasting in EViews, the forecasted values for the indicators for a period from November 2016 to March 2018 were estimated based on the historical data of the indicators from April 2011 to October 2016. The forecasted values of the indicators are then compared with the actual values of the indicators to see if they differ significantly by using paired t-test. The study finds evidence to suggest that the policy of demonetization and resultant reduced supply of currency notes has provided impetus to the Indian public to move towards digital platforms, and the increased supply of currency notes thereafter has not led to complete reversal of this shift in this change in consumer preference. This leads to the conclusion that through effective policy shifts, consumer preferences can be altered, and the Indian economy could become a less cash economy.

Determinants of dividend policy have been a topic of debate in the academic literature for several decades, but the studies have not been able to give a concluding result on the topic. Existing literature reveals that one of the most challenging decisions, dividend payout, is affected by multiple determinants thereby impacting the value of stock, among which proficatibility, capital structure and level of cash flows are identified to be significant factors. The aim of this study is to evaluate empirically the determinants of dividend payout among the companies in the Indian auto components sector which are listed in major Indian bourses. This paper constitutes a modest attempt to explore the relationship between dividend policy (dividend pay-out ratio) of the companies and the variables representing profitability, capital structure, investments, liquidity and cash flows. The other salient feature of the study is that it examines casual relationship of financial performance, operational efficiencies and investment strategies on decision of paying the dividend. ANOVA, correlation analysis and regression analysis have been used to explore the relationship between the identified variables. The study finds that the dividend policy of the companies in the Indian auto components sector is largely influenced by the operating profit, cash from operations, proportion of cash from operations used for financing the investment activities and the proportion of equity in the capital structure of the companies. The study addresses the Indian auto components sector, which is not researched much, and suggests rejuvenation in dividend policy after accounting a derived variable of cash flow to capital expenditure, as identified relevant to the group of auto manufacturers selected for the study.

Investor sentiment is the result of trading behavior and irrational beliefs of investors leading to high volatility and market mispricing. This review aims to study the entire spectrum of articles in the domain of investor sentiment using a bibliometric analysis approach. To this end, the study analyzes a total of 1,919 articles published in the Scopus database between 1979 and 2022. The review uncovers major themes, leading authors, influencing articles, trend topics, top contributing countries, and affiliations. The review shows that the research in the domain of investor sentiment is growing exponentially with an annual growth rate of 15.88%, and the year 2020 witnessed the highest number of scientific productions accounting for 252 (13.68%) total publications. The results display that the USA and China are leading countries in terms of the total contribution and volume of studies from respective authors. The review also reveals that existing research in the field has mainly focused on themes such as market efficiency, asset pricing, stock returns, sentiment analysis, IPO underpricing, overreaction, and volatility, whereas Covid-19 and Bitcoin depicted as emerging themes from recent scholarly works.

The behavior of investors and their investment decision-making process in the financial markets are guided by psychological (sentiments) and personal characteristics (personality traits). Research in recent years has shown the connection between investor sentiment and personality traits and investment decisions. Though academic works in the field of behavioral finance are growing, studies on personality traits and investment decision-making with investor sentiment as a mediator are sparse. To this end, the paper aims to analyze the effects of Indian retail investors’ Big-five personality traits (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness) on their short-term and long-term investment decision-making with the mediating effect of investor sentiment. The study employs the Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Model to test the framed hypotheses. The findings of the study reveal that Neuroticism has a significant positive effect (β=0.352, p<0.05) on investor sentiment. It further shows that Extraversion has a significant positive effect (β=0.186, p<0.05) on long-term decision-making. On the contrary, the consciousness trait has a significant negative effect (β=-0.335, p<0.05) on short-term investment decision-making. Furthermore, the Openness trait demonstrates a significant effect on both short-term and long-term investment decision-making (β=0.357, p<0.05; β=0.007, p<0.05). However, the findings reveal no significant intervening effect of investor sentiment between personality traits and investment decision-making. Thus, the study strongly exerted the impact of investors’ personality traits on their investment decision-making due to the high influence of personal characteristics over sentiment effects.