Sonali Jain

This study aims to uncover differences in profitability and market timing skills of Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) against benchmarks. Using a Markov Regime Switching Model, the article comments on the extent of information utilization by FIIs during periods of low and high economic uncertainty across global (NASDAQ-Composite 3000) and local markets (NIFTY-500 index). The results show significant over-performance (under-performance) in FIIs against benchmarks (NIFTY-50 and NIFTY-500 indices) during low (high) market uncertainty for local uncertainty. However, there is no significant difference in the overall profitability of FIIs during events of global economic uncertainty. The analysis utilizes precise estimates by taking all companies within the index individually and maintaining holdings for all. The article utilizes profitability measures of cash flows, Modified Internal Rate of Return and Buy-and-Hold-returns. The results of this study are relevant to institutional investors, policymakers and investors, especially during local and global uncertainty events.

A partial risk guarantee (PRG) is one of the critical instruments in the blended finance approach that provides partial assurance to the risk investor to lend leveraged capital to the borrower. Under the PRG scheme, philanthropic capital is employed as a risk guarantee to create financial and economic additionality through the multiplier effect. This study examines the current trends in PRG and blended finance ecosystem research. This study also aims to identify future research areas to work upon. The bibliometric analysis highlights the need and advantages of blended finance and PRG. The study highlights themes, such as climate finance, SDGs, impact investments, and blended finance/PRGs, from the literature on blended finance. This study illustrates the impact for researchers and managers regarding the future direction to undertake and the domains where PRG can work wonders. The research allows for a comprehensive view of the leading trends, such as utilising blended finance tools such as PRG in funding the work in climate financing, SDGs, water, sanitation, and impact investment. This is perhaps the first study to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the developing area of blended finance partial risk guarantee literature to highlight its importance and advantages.

Purpose: This paper empirically investigates the effect of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) on the Indian financial market and firm betas, perhaps the first paper to do so. The results will be helpful for investors tracking betas during future the coronavirus waves.Design/methodology/approach: A conditional capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model is used to estimate time-varying daily betas of the 50 largest Indian stocks spread across 16 industries over five years (Nov 2017 to May 2021), including the two waves of COVID-19 in India.Findings: The results show that the betas increased during the COVID wave-1 (2020) but not during COVID wave-2 (2021). Moreover, the increase is more pronounced for consumer goods, infrastructure, insurance and information technology, unlike energy (oil and gas, power and mining) industries. Further, there are positive abnormal residual returns during the COVID waves. The results will be helpful for investors tracking betas during future COVID-19 waves.Originality/value: This is perhaps the first paper to study the firm betas in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recent literature reports higher single stock options (SSO) volume before earnings announcements (EA). There are no studies that explore single stock futures (SSF) in this context because of illiquid SSF markets in developed countries. Similar to SSO, SSF provide embedded leverage and facilitate short selling although at a lower cost, but do not provide downside‐risk protection. India’s liquid SSO and SSF provide a unique setting to study the preference of informed traders. We observe an increase in both SSO and SSF volume before EA. Further, SSF dominate SSO possibly due to SSO becoming expensive before EA and higher information leakage in India.