British policy towards Indian princes in late nineteenth and early twentieth‐century Britain

This article examines the factors which induced Indian princes to visit Britain, the background and implementation of British initiatives on princely travel and the vocal response they produced. It also explores the impact of residence in Britain and the ambiguity of Indian princes’ status within British society. The last part of the article focuses more closely on official British attempts to restrict foreign travel to England. The study concludes by highlighting the contradictory nature of British attitudes towards Indian princes in Britain. Clearly, official attitudes towards South Asians in Britain were much more complex than is sometimes suggested.     

A new alternative to the standard F test for clustered data

The data collection process and the inherent population structure are the main causes for clustered data. The observations in a given cluster are correlated, and the magnitude of such correlation is often measured by the intra-cluster correlation coefficient. The intra-cluster correlation can lead to an inflated size of the standard F test in a linear model. In this paper, we propose a solution to this problem. Unlike previous adjustments, our method does not require estimation of the intra-class correlation, which is problematic especially when the number of clusters is small. Our simulation results show that the new method outperforms the existing methods.     

The effects of internal resources and partnership quality on firm performance: An examination of Indian BPO providers

Firms from developed nations are increasingly resorting to business process outsourcing (BPO) as part of their global sourcing strategy. Although BPO is a growing practice, there has been limited empirical attention in understanding the phenomenon, particularly from the perspective of provider firms that execute important business processes for their overseas clients. In this paper we focus on the resources and capabilities that are utilized by the providers in fulfilling their clients' sourcing needs. Using resource-based view and social exchange as theoretical foundations, we argue that providers' human capital, organizational capital, management capability, and partnership quality are crucial assets that are deemed valuable by the clients and are utilized by the providers in attaining higher performance. Using a sample of Indian BPO providers, we empirically test three models (direct, mediating and moderating) to understand how these assets impact firm-level performance. Results show that resources and capabilities relate to performance in varying measures and partnership quality has partial-mediating and moderating effects on these relationships. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of the study and highlighting avenues of future inquiry.     

Normal approximation to the hypergeometric distribution in nonstandard cases and a sub-Gaussian Berry–Esseen theorem

In this paper, we consider simple random sampling without replacement from a dichotomous finite population. We investigate accuracy of the Normal approximation to the Hypergeometric probabilities for a wide range of parameter values, including the nonstandard cases where the sampling fraction tends to one and where the proportion of the objects of interest in the population tends to the boundary values, zero and one. We establish a non-uniform Berry–Esseen theorem for the Hypergeometric distribution which shows that in the nonstandard cases, the rate of Normal approximation to the Hypergeometric distribution can be considerably slower than the rate of Normal approximation to the Binomial distribution. We also report results from a moderately large numerical study and provide some guidelines for using the Normal approximation to the Hypergeometric distribution in finite samples.     

Does Outsourcing Really Improve Firm Performance? Empirical Evidence and Research Agenda

The phenomenon of outsourcing has spawned a rich body of scholarly work in the last two decades. Yet, the answer to one important question has remained elusive: Does outsourcing really improve firm performance? Addressing this question is important as firms across nations continue to embark on the practice of outsourcing to save operating costs and remain competitive. Scholars, practitioners and policy‐makers need to understand whether and how outsourcing benefits the firm. However, no comprehensive review of empirical evidence has been published so far that can address this question. This study reviews 57 empirical research articles that investigated the outsourcing–firm performance relationship in 47 peer‐reviewed scholarly journals over a 20‐year time‐span (1996–2015). The articles differ widely in research scope, context, level of analysis, data source, time‐span, industry sector, extent of outsourcing and measure of performance. The findings suggest that outsourcing can produce positive, negative, mixed, moderated or no significant impact on the firm. This study also provides useful directions for future research on outsourcing and firm performance.     

Resampling-based bias-corrected time series prediction

In this paper, we consider estimation of the mean squared prediction error (MSPE) of the best linear predictor of (possibly) nonlinear functions of finitely many future observations in a stationary time series. We develop a resampling methodology for estimating the MSPE when the unknown parameters in the best linear predictor are estimated. Further, we propose a bias corrected MSPE estimator based on the bootstrap and establish its second order accuracy. Finite sample properties of the method are investigated through a simulation study.     

Uncovering Britain's South Asian past: The case of George Edalji

The case of George Edalji affords a rare glimpse into the life of an Asian in Edwardian Britain and the type of responses he and his family provoked. The concerns raised by the case, particularly allegations of police corruption appear contemporary, especially in light of recent high‐profile miscarriages of justice in Britain. But the Edalji case was also a product of its time. It provides an opportunity to assess the way race, class and the law operated in the context of Imperial Britain. It and other cause célèbres publicized in the press led to the establishment of a Court of Criminal Appeal in Britain.     

Confidence Bands for ROC Curves With Serially Dependent Data

We propose serial correlation-robust asymptotic confidence bands for the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and its functional, viz., the area under ROC curve (AUC), estimated by quasi-maximum likelihood in the binormal model. Our simulation experiments confirm that this new method performs fairly well in finite samples, and confers an additional measure of robustness to nonnormality. The conventional procedure is found to be markedly undersized in terms of yielding empirical coverage probabilities lower than the nominal level, especially when the serial correlation is strong. An example from macroeconomic forecasting demonstrates the importance of accounting for serial correlation when the probability forecasts for real GDP declines are evaluated using ROC. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.