Editorial

The previous two issues of the journal were devoted to the understanding of the ‘Political Economy for the Present Century’ and ‘COVID-19 Crisis and its Implications on the Indian Labour Market’. I am thankful to the guest editors, Professor Goddanti Omkarnath and Dr Debdulal Saha, and Dr Anamitra Roychowdhury, respectively, for their hard works to invite the experts and collect the articles for publication in the journal.

The Indian Economic Journal is committed to promote the authors to write quality articles for publication in IEJ. A small sample of articles submission during 2020–2021 for publication in IEJ shows that out of three articles, one was accepted and two were rejected. However, accepted articles were subjected to many rounds of revisions as well.

There are few more findings from the sample that deserve attention so far as the research publication in economics in IEJ is concerned.

Of the accepted category of articles, 55% are researchers, 21% professors, 12% associate and assistant professors, each. Research scholars are more active in publication than the teachers’ category.

Of the accepted articles 39% have no co-authors. Rejection of articles when professor and associate professors are first co-author is very low, approximately 17%, taken together. Multiple collaborative articles are very low among accepted articles.

It is significant to note that 55% of authors have affiliation of government institutions, 22% to the private institutions and 23% to foreign institutions. So far as institution type is concerned 62% of authors are working in university departments, 23% in foreign university and institutes. A small minority of authors, 5%, belong to colleges and 11% to institutes. Hence it shows research performance of teachers of economics departments in colleges is abysmal. It is interesting to note that hierarchy with respect to research performance exists between university and colleges. Hierarchy exists even among university types.

Economics faculty of 47 central universities in India have 17% of accepted articles. Economics faculty of 371 state universities in India have 12% of accepted articles, and 124 deemed universities among Indian universities have the largest share of accepted articles (20%). Authors of foreign institutions/universities have largest, 23%, participation in accepted articles. Normalisation shows that central public university tops the list in economics research performance, followed by deemed universities and institutions of national importance. Colleges and institutions have least research performance in India in Economics. Private university in India also have second lowest research performance. Proxy of research performance is the acceptance of article in IEJ.

I requested associate editors of the journal to share their experiences for the rejection of articles in IEJ. Sreemanta Sarkar, one of the associate editors of IEJ, sent me the following response which is worth drawing the attention of the authors willing to submit the articles for publication in the journal.

‘Rejection’ always pains me and I am the last person to reject a manuscript unless there are sufficient grounds for it. Whenever a manuscript is given in my desk I try to judge, with the best of my knowledge and experience, its suitability to be entered in the review process. Unless it is completely out of the aims and scope of the journal, written haphazardly (not following standard norms and practices of manuscript preparation), having serious methodological flaws or having a high similarity index, it qualifies for the review process. Dealing a huge number of manuscripts for the last one year and reading numerous review comments, it appears that a manuscript gets rejected for various reasons and these may vary depending on the type of manuscript (research article, research note, book review, commentary). However, research articles are rejected principally for the following reasons.

Error in methodological aspects.

Selection of inappropriate methodology.

Wrong choice of sample, selection of very small sample size, lack of randomness in sample choice, and so on, in case of manuscripts based on primary data.

Not getting IRB approval for works based on primary survey on human subjects may also lead to rejection now a days (though this is not adhered in our journal).

Absence of any research gap and research objectives or improper specification of research objectives.

Lack of adequate theoretical or literature support to justify the results and the conclusion.

Emphasis on empirical analysis only without any theoretical background.

Inconsistency in findings.

Results completely in contradiction to the research objectives.

Incomplete literature survey to justify research gap and research objectives and citation of irrelevant literature compared to the objectives of the study.

Insignificant or no contribution to the existing body of knowledge.

Incorrigible style of writing including exaggeration, incoherence, inconsistency and huge grammatical errors, and so on. Lack of one-to-one correspondence between articles cited in the work and in the reference, section also sometimes carry one of the causes of rejection.

Collection of articles in the issue varies in terms of thematic focus. An article on ‘Colocation of formal and informal manufacturing and firm performance: Evidence from India’ by Renjith Ramachandran and Subash Sasidharan examines the impact of colocation between formal and informal manufacturing sector on plant level productivity. Colocation with informal enterprises have found to have positive impact on productivity of formal sector plants.

Study by Mehraj Ahmad Sheikh, Mushtaq Ahmad Malik and Dr Rana Zehra Masood in an article entitled ‘Uncertainty, trade and growth: An Indian experience’ examines the macro-economic effects of uncertainty due to trade openness and the empirical estimates suggest that the macro-economic effects of uncertainty are effectively mitigated by trade openness. Article by Seema Narayan, Evita Purnaningrum and Baqir Khawari in an article entitled ‘Assessing the financial implications of COVID-19 within the SVAR framework for some Asian countries’ examines the structural responses of foreign exchange and equity markets on account of COVID-19 pandemic in seven Asian countries.

Vineeth P. and Dr K. B. Nidheesh have examined the role of firm specific factors influencing the likelihood of establishing a subsidiary in tax haven countries in an article entitled ‘The firm specific factors influencing the tax haven operations of Indian multinationals’. The results show that firms from high technology manufacturing and knowledge intensive sector have more influence on the likelihood of owning a tax haven subsidiary by Indian multinationals.

Dr Bashir Ahmad Joo and Sana Shawl examine the relationship between FDI and economic growth in BRICS economies in their article ‘Examining the FDI-growth nexus in BRICS: Panel data evidence’. The findings suggest a significant positive impact of FDI on economic growth in BRICS. However, exports, human capital and inflation exert a negative impact on economic growth of BRICS.

In an article entitled ‘Causal nexus between crude, gold, dollar and stock markets in India: Empirical explorations before, during and after the global recession’ authored by T. G. Saji examine the price linkage among oil, dollar, gold and stock markets in India over a long period of 20 years from 1999 to 2019.

Alisha Mahajan and Dr Kakali Majumdar in their article ‘Impact of environmental tax on comparative advantage of food and food products—A study of G-20 countries in light of environmentally sensitive goods’ evaluate the relationship and impact of the environmental tax on the comparative advantage of trade in food and food products industry.

Devi Prasad Dash, Aruna Kumar Dash and Narayan Sethi in their article on ‘Understanding the pandenomics: Indian aviation industry and its uncertainty absorption’ study the effect of communicable diseases on air travel and hotels.

Vasavi Bhatt, Shweta Bahl and Ajay Sharma in the article on ‘COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown and the Indian labour market: Evidence from PLFS 2018–19’ analyses current labour market being affected due to COVID 19 pandemic, subsequent lockdown and the expected slowdown in the Indian economy.

Lastly, a research note by Nandini Ramamurthy on ‘Wage disparity along global production system: The case of textile industry in Tiruppur’ discusses the root causes of wage disparity in the textile industry.