The literature on the influence of political and policy-related uncertainties on financial aspects has gained an impetus in the last two decades. This study adds to the existing literature by reviewing the impact of political uncertainty on initial public offerings (IPOs). We aim to provide a holistic overview of the past research in this domain, identify the potential research gaps, and explore them further. We performed a bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer to identify the major keywords used, the most cited papers, the authors, and the major countries where research in this domain has taken place. Our perspective on the current state of the literature has been threefold. First, considering the importance of market timing in the firm’s decision to go public, it was seen that firms had shown an unwillingness to come up with an IPO during periods of high political uncertainty. Second, political uncertainty has shown its influence in all the phases of the IPO process; however, political connections and donations mitigate this effect. Third, the research in this domain is still at a very nascent stage and is mainly restricted to China and the US. Thus, we believe that there are several areas that are yet to be explored.

This study tries to find out the post-announcement performance of the buyback firms over the long term in India using data from the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). We have chosen the event study methodology and compared the performance for a one-year, a three-year, and a five-year period. The benchmarks chosen are the Sensex, the BSE 500, the size matched firms and the size and industry matched firms. The findings of the study show overperformance by buyback firms when compared to the Sensex and the BSE 500 but no conclusion can be drawn when compared to the size matched firms and size and industry matched firms.

In this study, an attempt has been made to find out why investors still prefer broker-sold fund over direct-sold fund despite the superior performance of the latter. We find the sensitivity of funds flow in selected direct-sold funds and broker-sold funds in India. We do not find any evidence that direct-sold funds underperform the broker-sold funds. Despite the superior performance of direct-sold funds, Indian investors go for broker-sold funds because of ignorance and also for the additional services provided by the brokers. We find that fund houses in India offer both direct and broker-sold funds to target different segments of investors.

Purpose: As the Covid-19 virus originated from China, there was an anti-China sentiment all over the world. The purpose of our study is to find out whether this anti-China sentiment affected the stock return of the companies dependent on Chinese supply chain vis-à-vis the companies those do not have a Chinese supply chain link. Methodology: To analyze the impact of announcements on lockdown and relief measures by the government on stock market data, we use the dummy variable approach in the event methodology suggested by Karafiath (1988). We observe the stock market reaction to lockdown and relief measure announcements on consecutive seven days after the announcement. Findings: Overall findings show us that investors did not have a negative outlook on firms with Chinese suppliers. The investors are either not aware of the companies' Chinese supply link or do not consider these at the time of investing. The potential problems associated with supply chain disruptions are overlooked if we do not consider the supply chain information when investing. Originality: Our paper is unique because there is no study on the supply chain glitches of Indian companies’ dependent on the Chinese supply chain due to the Covid-19 breakout.

This paper studies the long term memory of the returns from selected mutual funds from the large, mid & small cap and hybrid categories in India, over 10 years starting from 2008-09. The Hurst exponent is used to study the persistence and anti-persistent or mean-reverting trends and hence the market efficiency of the returns of the funds across various categories and periods are analyzed. The findings indicate, that there seems to be no significant difference in the market efficiency of various mutual funds across the categories studied over our period of interest. Although for certain periods all the categories do show persistent or anti-persistent behavior, there does not seem to be any particular pattern in such behaviour.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to find out the effect of consumption tax on savings behavior especially on the people who are close to their retirement.Design/methodology/approach: The authors analyze the response in spending and retirement saving using a difference-in-differences regression methodology. The authors use the year since the Public Provident Fund (PPF) enrollment date for each individual as a random assignment to identify the service tax policy's causal impact. Therefore, this variable is a continuous variable defined as an individual's age until the end of the restrictions when people can withdraw money from their retirement savings account PPF without any penalty. The treatment variable is the service tax shock (increase in service tax) that happened effective 1st April 2015.Findings: The authors find a significant effect of a change in the service tax rate on individuals' spending and PPF saving behavior. On average, individuals lower their consumption by about 14% and increase their PPF savings by 16% in response to the increase in the service tax rate. The authors find substantial heterogeneity in effect across different types of individuals. The effect is more pronounced for people closer to their retirement and needy people (defined as individuals with low traditional savings account balances).Research limitations/implications: The authors studied the effect of consumption tax on one category of savings (PPF) only. There are other savings instruments available in India. The data for those were not available to us.Practical implications: This paper not only throws light on the consumption and savings behaviour of the individuals, but will also help the policy maker for framing appropriate fiscal policy.Originality/value: Using a unique and proprietary data from a large bank in India, the authors analyze the effect of a tax policy change on households' consumption and retirement savings behavior. The authors find that households reduce their consumption by 14% and increase their voluntary retirement savings (Public Provident Fund aka PPF) by 16% in response to an increase in the service tax policy. Individuals close to their retirement age (55 years of age and above) and without any withdrawal restrictions from their PPF account tend to reduce their expenditures more and save more. Individuals with financial constraints and withdrawal restrictions do not reduce their expenditures significantly. To the best of the authors’ knowledge no study was done on this.