Narrow Results

A firm’s performance depends on efficient management of economic resources. Performance is usually a function of firm-specific economic factors and macroeconomic factors. In other words, an efficient allocation, management and manipulation of these factors is required to enhance profitability. This study attempts to identify some factors to understand how and to what extent these factors influence the profitability of the Indian cement industry. Seven hypotheses were framed. Panel data of 146 firms were gathered over a period of 22 years, spanning from 1996 to 2017. Thereafter, a Fixed Effect Regression (FER) model was fitted to the data. Results suggested that both firm-specific (e.g. size of firm; age of firm; fixed asset turnover) and macroeconomic variables (e.g. GDP; inflation; export intensity) made a significant impact on profitability of this industry. The findings of this study should assist managers as well as policy makers to frame sustainable policies of this mature industry. This research fulfills a need for a study that shows the degree of contribution of firm-specific and macroeconomic factors to profitability of the Indian cement industry.

This paper empirically investigates the effect of economic freedom on the informal economies in a sample of 112 countries over the period 2000–2007. We employ two methodologies: fixed effect and the GMM models. We find a statistically significant negative relationship between economic freedom and the informal economy. This conclusion indicates that the nature of the economic system plays an important role in seizing the informal economy. Further, our results demonstrate that the formal and informal economies are substitutes. The policy implication is that economies with high share of informal economy should work with fewer economic restrictions.

The establishment of pilot Free Trade Zones is one of the important measures for China to stimulate regional economic growth through deepening reform and opening up. In this paper, the panel data of 21 cities in Guangdong Province from January 2010 to December 2020 are taken as samples, and the fixed effect model is used to analyze the spillover effect of the Guangdong pilot Free Trade Zone on regional economic growth. The results show that the spillover effect of the Guangdong pilot Free Trade Zone on regional economic growth is significant, with the largest spillover effect on the home city, followed by the Pearl River Delta, which ranks third in Guangdong Province.

This paper constructs the cultural tourism industry development index. Based on the principal component analysis, by collecting the relevant data on China’s inter-provincial cultural tourism industry from 2015 to 2019, one can measure the development level of the cultural tourism industry. Based on the conclusion, one can use the fixed effect model to analyze the influencing factors of the development of the cultural and tourism industry. According to the results, one can put forward the relevant countermeasures.