Majumdar, Sumit Kumar
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10735.1/3865
Sumit Majumdar is a professor of Information Systems. During his career Dr. Majumdar's research has been eclectic, spanning several areas. Currently his interests include
- Competition policy
- Telecommunications regulation
- Technology strategy
- Indian business strategy
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Mergers and Wages in Digital Networks: A Public Interest Perspective(Springer New York LLC, 2019-04-01) Majumdar, Sumit Kumar; Moussawi, R.; Yaylacicegi, U.; Majumdar, Sumit KumarThis article has examined the relationship between mergers and their impact on average per-person wages for incumbents, over long periods of institutional changes within the United States telecommunications industry, from a public interest perspective. We evaluate the relationship of mergers and wages across two differing periods; one, when the sector was completely regulated, and, the other, when competition was introduced after the Telecommunications Act of 1996. We treat mergers as endogenous and use treatment effects analysis to examine the relationship of mergers and wages. Having split the data set into data for regulated and deregulated periods, we find no impact of mergers on wages in the regulated period. In the deregulated period, however, between 1996 and 2001, we find a significant negative impact on mergers and wages. For firms experiencing mergers, real average wages per employee are a third lower than in non-merging firms. This suggests a post-merger cost-cutting approach by firms. Our before-and-after findings of wages declining after mergers, in the 1996 to 2001 period, lead us to conclude that the merger approvals given after the passage of TA 1996 will not have met public interest guidelines as per which merger outcomes ought to be fair to affected firms’ employees and stakeholders. Additionally, we suggest a resolution to the empirical puzzle, of half-negative and half-positive merger and wage outcome findings existing in the literature, by incorporating institutional context into our analysis to explain why during some periods of time the relationship of merger and wage outcomes may be positive and at other times may be negative. © 2019, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.Item Firms, Markets, and the State: Institutional Change and Manufacturing Sector Profitability Variances in IndiaMajumdar, Sumit Kumar; Bhattacharjee, Arnab; 0000 0000 4261 6891 (Majumdar, SK); 96012269 (Majumdar, SK)We assess absolute magnitudes, relative importance, and intertemporal differences in firm, industry, and business group effects in explaining the variance of Indian manufacturing firms' profitability over the 26-year period between 1980-1981 and 2005-2006. We stratify the data by institutional phases to place emphasis on the role of changing institutional factors in an emerging economy: first as a regime of command and control transits to partial liberalization (between 1985 and 1991) and then to an open competitive market economy (after 1991); thereafter, financial reforms occur, followed by legal reforms. We find that liberalization significantly affects and alters the relative importance of firm, industry, and group effects. Firm effects are always important, whether in a command and control regime, with benefits accruing from protectionism and political rent seeking, or in liberalized periods where firm-specific capabilities and dynamic efficiencies are valued. Industry effects are significant in the command and control regime, when mandatory sector placement benefits firms in industries with superior profits, and in the liberalized period, when the choice of the industry segment in which to operate is open to firms. Thereafter, industry effects dissipate. Business group effects matter in explaining profitability variances. Group effects' magnitudes, however, do not change significantly over time.