On the Controversy over the Origins of the Chicago Plan for 100% Reserves: Sorry, Frederick Soddy, it was Knight and (Most Probably) Simons!

Abstract

The idea of 100% reserve requirements against demand deposits received a renewed impetus in recent years. In 1933, a group of University of Chicago economists, led by Frank Knight and Henry Simons, circulated two memoranda that proposed the scheme in what became known as the Chicago Plan of Banking Reform. That same idea had been proposed in 1926 by Frederick Soddy, a Nobel Laureate in chemistry. Soddy claimed precedence, a claim that caught on. I provide evidence showing that Knight, and probably Simons, conceived the idea of 100% reserves prior to the publication of Soddy's 1926 book.

Establishing the Relative Importance of Challenges in Early-stage Entrepreneurship using Analytical Hierarchy Process

Business Perspectives and Research, Ahead of Print.
Entrepreneurship is of utmost importance in a country’s economic development. Starting one’s own business is not easy and it is even more difficult to sustain in this highly competitive environment. This research helps understand the relative importance of challenging factors that hinders the growth of an enterprise resulting in an entrepreneur deciding whether to continue the business or exit it in the early phase itself. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is the technique used here to determine the relative position of these factors in persuading an entrepreneur’s decision to continue or exit the business. A thorough literature review identified the key challenging factors in early-stage entrepreneurship related to, Finance, Administration, Personal, Product & Market, Environment, and Human Resources. Pairwise comparison is done by collecting the opinions of eight specialists from the industry and from academia, for formulating the reciprocal matrix and analysis using AHP. The finding of this study helps entrepreneurs identify the major hurdles and their impact on the successful launch or growth of their enterprise. On the other side, this research can also be useful for the Government and other support agencies in framing policies, to wipe out hurdles that pave way for a conducive entrepreneurial environment.

The Missing Gender: Examining the Barriers to Women’s Participation in Sports in India

Business Perspectives and Research, Ahead of Print.
The advent of modernity has changed the sports landscape of the world, wherein all barriers, especially gender discrimination, have been broken, with men and women competing shoulder to shoulder in the sports arena. However, the sports landscape in India is completely different, as all the major sports activities are dominated by men. The aim of this study is to classify and rank the barriers that deter women’s participation in sports in India. For achieving this objective, a multi-criteria decision-making technique of Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) and MICMAC analysis has been used for relative ranking and classification of barriers that lead to gender discrimination in sports in India.The study encapsulates significant barriers that hinder women from actively participating in sports in India. The findings of our study suggest that economic barriers, lack of sporting infrastructure and culture, lack of potential career opportunities, knowledge barriers, and socio-cultural barriers are vital reasons that have implications for limiting women’s participation in sports and society alike. From a policy perspective, the proposed model will help identify the key barriers that ought to be addressed to bridge the gap between men and women in the sports sector in India.