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            This issue of MUDRA: Journal of Finance and Accounting brings together a wide range of papers in diverse areas of finance and accounting such as green investment, portfolio selection, determinants of HR disclosure practices, deposit insurance and banking risk and fair value measurement and corporate reporting.

            An interesting paper from the point of view of policymakers who would want to create a conducive disinvestment policy, the paper by Mr. Vijay Kumar Choudhary, Mr. Kanhaiya Singh and Ms. Vandana Gupta examines the impact of disinvestment on performance of select Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs) in India. Their findings indicate that while the CPSEs' liquidity situation, dividend, value, and size improved after disinvestment, the profitability, leverage, and operating efficiency of CPSEs, on the other hand, did not change significantly. Another paper with a focus on performance of public sector in India is by Prof. Dharmendra Mistry and Dr. Pallavi Vyas who identify the determinants of profitability of public oil and gas sector in India. They conclude that current ratio and fixed assets turnover ratio have a positive impact on profitability, while debt-equity ratio has negative impact on profitability of the sector.

              A topical paper on ‘Does it really pay to be green in India? A study of financial performance of select power companies’ by Dr. Rachna Jawa, Ms. Kishwar Zamani and Mr. Harish Kumar compares the financial performance of select renewable energy generating companies to traditional (non-renewable) power generating companies in India for the period of 2009-2018. Employing panel regression model, their results indicate no significant difference between the financial performances of the two types of power generating companies. The study also concludes that the renewable energy companies add value in the economy similar to the traditional power sector companies.

            Selecting an optimum portfolio that meets the expectations and requirements of investors has always been an area of interest in finance. Mr. Shubham Sah, Dr. Amit Kundu and Dr. Anil Kumar Goyal analyse fifteen companies from the Indian stock market and propose a financial model to get the optimum portfolio. The result of their analysis indicates that the combination of fifteen stocks gives lower expected return than a combination of ten stocks and five stocks. Further, the portfolio with fewer stocks has higher risk compared to the portfolio with more stocks.

            An interesting paper by Ms. Japika Gupta and Prof. Varda Sardana is on ‘Deposit insurance and banking risk in India: Empirical evidence on the role of moral hazard’. Given the belief that the policy of deposit insurance leads to the problem of moral hazard and adverse selection, the authors construct a relation between deposit insurance and bank risk for Indian scheduled commercial banks. They infer that deposit insurance significantly increases the risk levels of banks, given the constraint that total deposits increase faster than insured deposits. The authors provide relevant policy prescriptions in this regard along with the findings.

            Reinvestigating the relationship of capital structure with firm performance using the data of 500 NSE companies in India, the paper by Ms. Sabhuri Dhar, Ms. Khushi Gupta, Mr. Anup Kumar Srivastava and Mr. Vinod Kumar Baga attempt to understand the disparity between theory suggesting a certain level of debt in a company's capital structure and practice wherein some large corporations are reducing their debt capital, even making it zero in certain cases. The regression analysis results support the view that capital structure influences firm performance, thus leaving scope for further examination of this theory-practice nexus. Dr. Kirti Aggarwal, in her paper examines the determinants of human resource disclosure index (HRDI) in public sector companies in India. The results indicate that the HRDI of public sector listed companies is at a moderate level. Further, the company age, leverage, annual report’s pages, and listing abroad have a significant influence on HRDI of the Indian listed companies.

           A case study in this issue by Dr. Dipti Kumar Chakravorty and Dr. Debarshi Bhattacharya examine the impact of fair value measurement on corporate reporting in India. The authors observe that though companies complied with legal and professional requirements as regards adoption of fair value measurement, but this had been mostly in words and not in spirit. Accordingly, corporate reporting in India on the basis of fair value measurement as per Ind ASs didn’t reflect comprehensive fair value position of the state of affairs of companies till date.

           We hope our readers find this issue of MUDRA engaging and insightful and we look forward to receiving diverse and topical contributions to the journal from our potential authors.

Wishing all our readers and authors a happy and prosperous 2022!