499 research outputs found
Does social identity matter in individual alienation? Household-level evidence in post-reform India
No full textDoes consumption distance as a measure of individual alienation reveal the effect of social identity? Using the central idea of Akerlof's social distance theory, individual distance is calculated from their own group mean consumption and then we examine whether individuals from different social groups - caste and religion - are alienated across the distance distribution. Using India's household-level microdata on consumption expenditure covering three major survey rounds since the inception of the reform period, we find a non-unique pattern where the marginalised and minority group households tend to be alienated across the distance distribution. However, among them, the households with higher educational attainment become more integrated as reflected in the interaction effect of education. These results are robust even after controlling for the endogeneity of education. Given this significant group difference in consumption, we undertake a group-level comparison by creating a counterfactual group through exchanging the characteristics of the privileged group to the marginalised group (or Hindus to non-Hindus), and find that the privileged group still consumes more than the counterfactual marginalised group, explaining around 77% of the estimated average consumption gap at the median quantile in 2011-12 (or 59% for Hindus versus Non-Hindus). This suggests other inherent identity-specific social factors as possible contributors to within-group alienation (relative to a better-off category) that can only be minimised through promoting education for the marginalised (or minority religion) groups
The saving-investment relationship revisited: new evidence from regime-switching cointegration approach
No full textThis paper exploits the regime-switching threshold cointegration approach to elicit the dynamics in the saving-investment relationship and capital mobility in India. Empirical results offer key insights into the threshold cointegration between the saving and investment rates. We find that the adjustment in investment rate in the upper regime is faster than in the lower regime, indicating the higher mobility of capital in the upper regime. Further, results reveal the absence of firm evidence of long-run vs. short-run asymmetries between saving and investment rates. However, results suggest that cumulative positive and negative sums of saving rates affect investment rates. We have made adjustments to cyclical and trend patterns in our data using Hamilton's (2018) filter and have produced robust results with regard to asymmetric cointegration. The posterior estimation results suggest that a downward trend in the saving rates substantially impacts the investment rates, and widening the gap between saving and investment rates facilitates huge mobility of international capital in the long run
What drives energy consumption in BRICS countries? Evidence from ARDL bounds testing approach
No full textRapid urbanization, openness and growth in human development index are some of the leading determinants of energy consumption in developing countries, particularly in BRICS economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). Thanks to their innate tendency to converge to the growth path of developed nations, BRICS countries are under increasing pressure to limit high energy consumption-triggered by outsourcing from developed nations. This paper attempts to weigh the relative importance of various determinants of energy consumption in BRICS countries between 1980 and 2016, studying in-depth the long-run co-movement pattern of energy consumption with demographic characteristics (depicting demand pressure) and macroeconomic aggregates (depicting cheap production cost). By leveraging on the trade-off between domestic and foreign demand and by employing the autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach, we establish differential effects of various predictors: Whilst an increase in population growth rate, gross domestic product and capital account openness exert a positive and significant impact on energy consumption in Brazil, China and South Africa, foreign direct investment (FDI) and human development appear to enhance energy consumption in India, China and South Africa. The growth in external demand and the FDI inflows appear to have pushed urbanization, leading to greater energy consumption during the study period. Keeping in mind the sustainability goal, stronger green energy practices and sustainable urbanization patterns are needed to curb excessive energy sources.</p
Does social cohesion limit uncertainties in economic growth: A pre- and post-reform analysis from India
No full textMathematical tapas
No full textThis book contains a collection of exercises (called “tapas”) at undergraduate level, mainly from the fields of real analysis, calculus, matrices, convexity, and optimization. Most of the problems presented here are non-standard and some require broad knowledge of different mathematical subjects in order to be solved. The author provides some hints and (partial) answers and also puts these carefully chosen exercises into context, presents information on their origins, and comments on possible extensions. With stars marking the levels of difficulty, these tapas show or prove something interesting, challenge the reader to solve and learn, and may have surprising results. This first volume of Mathematical Tapas will appeal to mathematicians, motivated undergraduate students from science-based areas, and those generally interested in mathematics.This textbook presents a collection of interesting and sometimes original exercises for motivated students in mathematics. Written in the same spirit as Volume 1, this second volume of Mathematical Tapas includes carefully selected problems at the intersection between undergraduate and graduate level. Hints, answers and (sometimes) comments are presented alongside the 222 “tapas” as well as 8 conjectures or open problems. Topics covered include metric, normed, Banach, inner-product and Hilbert spaces; differential calculus; integration; matrices; convexity; and optimization or variational problems. Suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics, this book aims to sharpen the reader’s mathematical problem solving abilities
Experimental investigation of solar photovoltaic panel integrated with phase change material and multiple conductivity-enhancing-containers
No full textAmong all passive methods for photovoltaics (PV) cooling, phase change material (PCM) can be highly effective due to high latent heat capacity. However, very low thermal-conductivity of PCM restricts its potential. The proposed work focuses on the enhancement of rate of heat transfer from PV to PCM by using conductivity-enhancing-containers. The proposed approach was experimented outdoor and compared with the reference panel for different seasons at Chennai, India. PV temperature, open circuit voltage, short circuit current, Current-Voltage (I–V) and Power-Voltage (P–V) curves, fill-factors, power outputs, efficiency and daily electricity generation are reported. The results show that the proposed heat sink was able to decrease the maximum PV temperature from 64.4 °C to 46.4 °C for January and 77.1 °C to 53.8 °C for June. It increased the open circuit voltage of PV from 24.3 V to 26.4 V for January and 23.6 V to 26.0 V for June. The fill-factor increased from 0.678 to 0.705 for January. Consequently, the electrical efficiency increased from 9.5% to 10.5% during noon. Daily electricity generation increased from 769 Wh/day to 817 Wh/day during January and 948 Wh/day to 1026 Wh/day during June. Thus, daily electricity generation increased by 6.2% for January and 8.3% for June using proposed approach.</p
Improved reactive power sharing for parallel-operated inverters in islanded microgrids
No full textUnequal impedances of interconnecting cables between paralleled inverters in island mode of microgrids cause inaccurate reactive power sharing when traditional droop control is used. Many in the literature adopt low speed communications between the inverters and a central control unit to overcome this problem. However, the loss of this communication link can be very detrimental to the performance of the controller. This paper proposes an improved reactive power-sharing control method. It employs infrequent measurements of the voltage at the point of common coupling (PCC) to estimate the output impedance between the inverters and the PCC and readjust the voltage droop controller gains accordingly. The controller then reverts to being a traditional droop controller using the newly calculated gains. This increases the immunity of the controller against any loss in the communication links between the central control unit and the inverters. The capability of the proposed control method has been demonstrated in simulation and experiment using a laboratory scale microgrid
Optimization of a novel Hybrid Wind Bio Battery Solar Photovoltaic System Integrated with Phase Change Material
No full textThe intermittent nature of renewable sources, such as solar and wind, leads to the need for a hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) that can provide uninterrupted and reliable energy to a remote and off-grid location with the use of a biogas generator and battery. In the present study, conventional PV panels have been integrated with phase change material (PCM) for power enhancement. In addition, various configurations (i. PV-Wind-Battery system, ii. PV-PCM-Wind-Battery, iii. PV-Wind-Biogas-Battery and iv. PV-PCM-Wind-Biogas-Battery) have been compared for the hot and humid climatic location of Chennai, India. Optimization has been carried out to minimize the cost of energy and the net present cost has also been computed. It has been found that the integration of PCM with the PV-Wind-Biogas-Battery-based off-grid system results in savings of USD 0.22 million in terms of net present cost and reduces the cost of energy from USD 0.099/kWh to USD 0.094/kWh. Similarly, for another off-grid HRES configuration of PV-Wind-Battery, the integration of PCM results in savings of USD 0.17 million, and reduces the cost of energy from USD 0.12/kWh to USD 0.105/kWh
- …
