Purpose: This paper aims to understand the effect of a change in Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) of India and the USA on investors' sentiment in the Indian context, consisting of Sensex returns and volatility index (Vix).Design/methodology/approach: The authors employ bounds testing approach to cointegration to capture the short-and long-run effects of EPU on investors' sentiment, along with impulse response functions and variance decompositions to check the effect of a shock on Sensex and Vix.Findings: The study concludes the existence of a cointegrating relationship for both models, that is, Vix and Sensex. In the long-run, changes in EPU_India affect Vix and Sensex positively and negatively, respectively. On the other hand, EPU_USA affects Vix and Sensex positively. Furthermore, Gregory and Hansen (1996) cointegration with endogenous structural break reveals a long-run cointegrating relationship for both models.Research limitations/implications: The effect of EPUs on investors' sentiment reveals that when there is an uncertain event that adversely affects the stock prices, investors should not make haste to take a decision as the impact on stock prices perturbation might be temporary. Therefore, one should persevere for the dip in prices to hit the desired target.Originality/value: Various studies look at the effect of cross-country EPU on the home country, However, there is no such study in the Indian context. The present study examines the impact of India's EPU on investors' sentiments after controlling the USA's EPU, one of India's largest trading partners and a key determinant of global economic policy.

This study examines the impact of IoT characteristics, key cultural dimensions, and safety concerns on consumer green purchase intentions. The research employed a survey approach, collecting responses from 278 consumers. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses. The finding of the study indicates that IoT characteristics (IoTC), environmental concerns (EC), collectivism (GW), and individualism (ID) have a positive effect with attitude toward green purchasing (AGP), which further affect green purchase intentions (GPI). Attitude toward green purchasing (AGP) mediates the relationship between IoTC, safety concerns (SC), collectivism (GW), individualism (ID), and green purchase intentions (GPI). The study’s findings help us understand how IoTC, social concerns, and cultural factors affect consumer green purchase intention.

Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in India are focused on improving their inventory management function as part of government's program to increase their contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP). A plethora of inventory models are available in literature; these models are either very complex, or need reliable inventory cost data, or are not applicable to all classes of items and are, therefore, rendered ineffective. In this paper we have developed and presented a simple, yet effective, model that combines the characteristics of selective inventory control (SIC) and an exchange curve (EC). Combination of these techniques not only allows determination of ordering policy for all items, but also involves managers in decision making, thus providing MSMEs with a solution that is robust and practical. We also describe application of this model to a sample of 30 items in an auto components manufacturing firm. The case study demonstrates ease of implementation of the proposed model as well as solution completeness.

The adoption of circular economy strategies is only possible through proper education among young minds. However, to build an effective education model, it is necessary to consider knowledge gaps and current consumption patterns. The best option for daily-use products, around which the consumer-response analysis can provide useful insights. Mat is such a product used in every household in India. There are two variants of the mat, one made of natural fibre and the other of plastic, available in the market and on the e-commerce platform. In the current scenario, the digital market or e-commerce platform provides an avenue to simultaneously analyse consumer comments on both natural fibre-based and plastic products. The present study deployed a natural language processing approach to analyse consumer comments. The Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT)-based rating or sentiment analysis, informed by practice-based theory (PBT), indicates that the main barrier to the adoption of circular products is not a lack of environmental awareness, but the misalignment between perceived product attributes and usage practices. This necessitates integrating sustainability literacy with material awareness into the educational curriculum.