Indian Institute of Management Calcutta

About: Indian Institute of Management Calcutta is a education organization based out in Kolkata, India. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Supply chain & Context (language use). The organization has 415 authors who have published 1354 publications receiving 21725 citations. The organization is also known as: IIMC & IIM Calcutta.

Can Institutions Be Reformed from within? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment with the Rajasthan Police

Abstract: Institutions in developing countries, particularly those inherited from the colonial period, are often thought to be subject to strong inertia. This study presents the results of a unique randomized trial testing whether these institutions can be reformed through incremental administrative change. The police department of the state of Rajasthan, India collaborated with researchers at US and Indian universities to design and implement four interventions to improve police performance and the public’s perception of the police in 162 police stations (covering over one-fifth of the State’s police stations and personnel): (1) placing community observers in police stations; (2) a freeze on transfers of police staff; (3) in-service training to update skills; and (4) weekly duty rotation with a guaranteed day off per week. These reforms were evaluated using data collected through two rounds of surveys including police interviews, decoy visits to police stations, and a large-scale public opinion and crime victimization survey -- the first of its kind in India. The results illustrate that two of the reform interventions, the freeze on transfers and the training, improved police effectiveness and public and crime victims’ satisfaction. The decoy visits also led to an improvement in police performance. The other reforms showed no robust effects. This may be due to constraints on local implementation: The three successful interventions did not require the sustained cooperation of the communities or the local authorities (the station heads) and they were robustly implemented throughout the project. In contrast, the two unsuccessful interventions, which required local implementation, were not systematically implemented.

Models to explore remanufacturing as a competitive strategy under duopoly

Abstract: Remanufacturing is a product recovery option that upgrades the quality of returns to “as-good-as-new” conditions. Remanufactured products cost less, and are sold with the same or better warranty as for new products. In this paper, we consider a duopoly environment with two manufacturers in direct competition selling their respective new products on the primary market. Specifically, we address the question: In case one manufacturer decides to remanufacture and sell remanufactured products on the price-sensitive secondary market, will it get a competitive advantage over the other manufacturer? We develop theoretical models for a single period and two periods, and show that under the stated assumptions, remanufacturing is almost always more profitable than when there is no remanufacturing. Although remanufacturing may cannibalize new product sales, the combined profitability and market share of the (re)manufacturer on account of new and remanufactured product sales improve over new product sales only. For the competitor, we get mixed results. In some situations, its profitability improves; in some others, it worsens. We also conduct sensitivity analyses with respect to the substitution parameters, price-sensitivity of the secondary market, rate of return of used products (cores), relative market shares of the manufacturers, and relative sizes of the primary and secondary markets. We conclude the paper with managerial implications and directions for future research.

A survey of tcp enhancements for last-hop wireless networks

Abstract: TCP continues to be an important transport-layer communication protocol that is typically tuned to perform well in traditional wired networks, where bit error rate (BER) is low and congestion is the primary cause of packet loss. The emergence of various mobile access networks has prompted researchers to look for suitable modifications to TCP so as to make it survive in the wireless era as well. Networks with wireless links and mobile hosts incur significant losses due to high BER, host motion, and handoff mechanisms. Mobile devices face temporary and unannounced loss of network connectivity when they move. They are likely to have scarce resources, and they react to frequent changes in the environment. Motion causes varying, increased delays and packet losses, while the network learns how to deliver packets to the new location of the host. TCP incorrectly interprets these delays and losses as signs of network congestion and throttles its transmission rate, causing degraded end-to-end performance. This article provides an in-depth survey of various TCP enhancements which are specifically targeted for last-hop wireless environments. The objective is to review the performance issues of TCP variations, when employed in last-hop wireless networks, and to provide a categorized analysis of different existing solutions comparatively, as we all know that it is difficult to create a “one size fits all” TCP for last-hop wireless networks.