Journal Press India^®

            In its continuous endeavour to encourage discussion on diverse aspects of finance and accounting, this issue of MUDRA: Journal of Finance and Accounting brings to our readers an amalgam of aspects related to banking, capital and money markets which are an integral part of the financial system of a country.
            The paper by Mr. Aniket Kalbhor and Mr. Uday Kumar Jagannathan explores the relationship between behavioural biases influencing individual investors’ decision-making, demographics and the investor personalities classified according to the Bailard, Biehl and Kaiser five-way model. Employing factor analysis and structural equation modelling, the study finds that investors’ decisions are significantly influenced by the prevailing biases and provides strong indicators of the irrationality and inefficiency of the capital market. The structure of the money market, which is another important component of the financial system of a country, is examined in the paper by Prof. K. V. Bhanumurthy and Dr. Sonia Goel. The paper looks at the qualitative aspects of the market along with conducting an empirical analysis of the four sub-markets of the money market, i.e. Commercial Paper, Certificate of Deposit, Call rate and T-Bills.
            The banking industry is an integral part of the Indian financial system and it is pertinent to discuss issues related to the banking sector. Two papers in this issue cover different aspects of the Indian banking sector. The first paper is by Dr. Saugat Ghosh and Dr. Shuvendu Chakraborty who identify the service quality dimensions for the banking sector and provide a methodology to measure the difference between expected and perceived banking services. Examining the service quality of Indian banks, they observe that it is the primary responsibility of banks to enrich their service quality and gain more consumers through an understanding of the service quality dimensions of banking service. The other paper, by Dr. Mili Kar, identifies the emerging issues, challenges and opportunities for future growth of the Indian banking sector. The author points out that the issues of rising NPAs, persistent asset quality deterioration, liquidity management, and stressed banks’ balance sheets remain as the key priorities for the banking sector along with macroeconomic issues like conformity to Basel III norm, IFRS-converged Indian Accounting Standards, and financial innovation.
            The paper by Mr. Ranjeet Kumar Mishra investigates the impact of various factors on profitability and market value of pharmaceutical companies of India. Employing panel data of 14 pharmaceutical companies, the results indicate that the frequency of board meeting has a positive and board gender diversity, payable payment period, inventory holding period, amount of debt, current ratio and research and development expenses have a negative impact on profitability.  Dr. Basu Garg, in his paper on determinants of savings and investment pattern for college teachers in Himachal Pradesh, finds that college teachers are risk-averse with majority of them adopting less risky pattern of investment portfolio. Also, there was no significant correlation found between selected demographic variables  and pattern of investment.
            This issue of MUDRA has a case study by Dr. R. Vasanthagopal and Dr. K. K. Damodaran on the role played by the Kerala Gramin Bank in improving the socio-economic status of the customers through its inclusive practices. The analysis based on the opinion of the customers reveals that the bank has contributed significantly to the socio-economic progress of the State through increased employment, income, savings, involvement in socio-cultural institutions, and relieving customers from the repression of money lenders.
            This issue also has a review paper by Dr. Parminder Bajaj and Ms. Jasmeet Kaur that examines the applicability of the Black and Scholes model by providing a critical review of the available literature on the topic, within the field of derivative pricing. Using a qualitative approach, the authors find that the advances in the model over the years have provided useful solutions to decision-makers to understand the different techniques of evaluating options.
            We hope this issue of MUDRA makes for an interesting and insightful reading and we look forward to constructive feedback from our readers.

Prof. Muralidhar A. Lokhande
Dr. Pavnesh Kumar
Dr. Jitendra Janardan Ahirrao

         Editors