Browsing by Author "Virmani, Swati"

Now showing 1 - 14 of 14
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    AI and Big Data Readiness Report - Assessing the Public Relations Profession’s Preparedness for an AI Future
    (CIPR, 2021-11-23) Virmani, Swati; Gregory, Anne
    This Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data Readiness Report provides an analysis of a global survey of public relations practitioners and academics and video/written evidence from senior practitioners concerning the profession’s knowledge, skills, adoption of and attitudes towards AI, and to a lesser extent, Big Data. Its aim is to provide an overview of current AI understanding and preparedness, but most importantly, provide pointers to how the profession should equip itself to exploit the potential and guard against the possible dangers of AI.
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    Analysis of Sector Led Improvement of Children and Young People’s Services
    (2020-01-20) O'Neill, Robert; Virmani, Swati; Bamford, Jim
    This paper was commissioned by the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) National Performance and Information Management Group (NPIMG) to support the work of ADCS to evaluate and assess the impact of Sector Led Improvement of Children and Young People’s Services, and to explore the possibility of designing and developing (with ADCS and other partners) an ‘Early Warning’ model. The objective is to identify when and where the performance of Children and Young People’s Services is moving in the wrong direction. We undertake pre-post testing and difference in difference analysis, the latter allows us to use control data to ensure that external factors affecting all regions are considered.
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    Are Technology transfers skill biased?
    (Springer, 2019-07-12) Virmani, Swati
    A growing consensus suggests that absorption of new technology has a bias towards skilled labour. We investigate the relationship between technology change and demand for skilled workers by taking into account an array of tests to find evidence if technology has important effects on skill premium. The paper adopts an exploratory approach. Using a panel data for Indian manufacturing industries over the 2001-02 and 2013-14 period, the paper depicts the rising trend of skilled workers, decomposes the trend into within and between industries, suggests capital-skill complementarity as an important factor behind increasing skill demand, and identifies whether skill biased technology change (SBTC) is the key determinant of the trend observed. Our results show that not enough evidence can be found in favour of SBTC in case of India, a pattern comparable to 1990s as shown by previous studies. The study contributes as a good starting point to understand what accounts for the relative changes in industrial skill intensity.
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    Chief executive pay in UK higher education: the role of university performance
    (Springer, 2019-05-24) Virmani, Swati; Johnes, Jill
    Remuneration for chief executives in UK higher education—known as Vice Chancellors (VCs)—has been on an upward trend in recent years, and VCs have received criticism that their performance does not warrant such reward. We investigate the relationship between VC pay and performance (rooted in principal agent theory), taking into account an array of other possible determinants. Deriving measures of VC performance is difficult as VCs are agents for various principals, and each principal may be interested in a different aspect of performance. We consider three measures of VC performance here: managerial efficiency as measured by data envelopment analysis; performance in university rankings produced by the media; the financial stability of the university. We construct a comprehensive data set, covering academic years 2009/2010 to 2016/2017, a period of considerable change in the UK higher education sector including rapidly-rising undergraduate tuition fees. Our results show that, once other possible determinants of VC pay are taken into account, the main measure of performance which affects VC pay is the one based on media rankings. Thus the agents (VCs) appear to be rewarded for delivering against this performance benchmark which is likely to be of interest to a variety of principals. This result however varies by type of university suggesting that the labour market for VCs differs by mission group.
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    The Effects of AI on the Professions: A Literature Repository
    (Chartered Institute of Public Relations, 2020-01) Gregory, Anne; Virmani, Swati
    The literature on AI as a whole is huge and burgeoning, but a focus on the professions has enabled us to look at how it will change the nature of work overall, and specifically how it will impact on those who offer a professional service either as specialist consultants or in-house practitioners in public, private and not for profit sectors. It does not claim to be exhaustive, but every topic that is currently under consideration about and arising from AI and the professions is covered here. It does not cover popular practitioner-oriented publications either since this was outside the remit of the research which was to look at a stable and authoritative base for considering AI and the professions. Readers of this report are encouraged to read the contemporary popular journals, blogs and websites since they provide a regular update on topics that are under consideration at any one time and form a running commentary that should be engaged with.
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    The efficiency of private and public schools in urban and rural areas: moving beyond the development goals
    (Wiley, 2019-03-25) Johnes, Geraint; Virmani, Swati
    Data from the Young Lives study are used to evaluate the efficiency of education systems in four low and middle income countries: Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. A meta-frontier variant of data envelopment analysis is used to assess the relative performance of each country’s system, and, within each country, to evaluate the impact of public and private schooling, and of urban and rural location. Comparisons are drawn between the four countries; the results indicate that in no country does the educational system perform uniformly badly or well. Conditioning on the inputs available, rural areas are often indicative of higher levels of efficiency, thus suggesting a number of implications for policy.
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    An Empirical Analysis of Residential Mortgage Refinancing Decision-Making
    (American Real Estate Society, 2010) Virmani, Swati; Murphy, Austin
    This research empirically investigates the relative optimality of several different methods of making refinancing decisions on residential mortgages. The results indicate that a simple rule of refinancing whenever the mortgage rate has dropped 1% was approximately as effective as application of an option pricing model in minimizing the cost of financing over the 1980–2007 interval
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    The Enigmatic Services Sector of India
    (Munich Personal RePEc Archive, 2018-09-26) Virmani, Swati; Balasubramanyam, V.N.
    The share of services in India’s GDP, at round 60%, is much higher than that in other emerging economies including China. Since the year 1991 Growth of services in the economy has surpassed that of agriculture and manufacturing, a feature that defies received wisdom on the growth pattern of economies. Received wisdom, grounded in the Kuznets paradigm, is that growth in the productivity of agriculture and agricultural incomes provides the manufacturing sector both low cost agricultural raw materials and a demand for its output. In time, the continued growth in incomes promotes the growth of the services sector both through a demand for consumer services and for services as growth promoting inputs into manufacturing and agriculture. India’s services sector, though, has grown alongside an agriculture sector that is none too productive, and a manufacturing sector that accounts for a relatively low 20% of the GDP. This paper provides an explanation, grounded in the country’s history and economic policies of the pre- liberalization era, for the growth of the services sector and argues that, contrary to popular opinion, it can lead the economy.
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    Foreign direct investment and reverse technology spillovers: The effect on total factor productivity
    (OECD, 2014-09-05) Amann, Edmund; Virmani, Swati
    The paper analyses the “feedback effect” of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth in emerging economies via technology spillovers across borders. We study the effect of R–D spillovers resulting from outward FDI flows from 18 emerging economies into 34 OECD countries over the 1990-2010 period, comparing the impact with that of spillovers resulting from inward FDI flows. The result confirms that FDI enhances productivity growth; however the impact is much larger when R-D-intensive developed countries invest in the emerging economies than the other way round. Country-specific bilateral elasticities also support this outcome.
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    Humans needed, more than ever
    (Chartered Institute of Public Relations, 2023-08-19) Gregory, Anne; Virmani, Swati; Valin, Jean
    New research from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) has found that up to 40% of tasks performed by public relations professionals are now assisted by AI tools. The report reveals that, while the adoption of AI tools has accelerated, they are still not widely used even though they make task execution more efficient and effective.
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    Is the Evolution of India’s Outward FDI Consistent with Dunning’s Investment Development Path Sequence?
    (Lancaster University Management School, 2015-09) Amann, Edmund; Virmani, Swati
    This paper examines whether India’s Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI) pattern is consistent with Dunning’s Investment Development Path (IDP) sequence using macro data over the period 1980-2010. We test whether the level of development - proxied by GDP per capita - is the main factor explaining OFDI, and augment the IDP by studying other major determinants such as Exports, Inward FDI (IFDI), Human Capital, and R&D using the Cointegration and Error Correction Model techniques. Our results support the main proposition of the IDP, but also highlight the importance of other factors. We also find that OFDI Granger-causes R&D, suggesting a possibility of reverse technology spillover.
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    Performance and efficiency in Indian universities
    (Elsevier, 2020-03-18) Johnes, Geraint; Johnes, Jill; Virmani, Swati
    While the evaluation of university efficiency has become commonplace in developed countries, exercises of this kind have rarely been conducted in the context of developing economies. We use frontier methods to analyse the determinants of costs in higher education institutions in India. Results obtained using the standard stochastic frontier model are compared with those from a latent class cost frontier model. Average incremental costs, returns to scale, and returns to scope are evaluated. Despite the relatively small size of average institution, we find that economies of scale are largely exhausted. The implications of various models for the evaluation of institution-level measures of efficiency are highlighted. The results differ in a number of respects from those obtained in more developed countries. Implications of the analysis for policy and practice are highlighted.
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    Reflecting to Rebuild and Strengthen Professional Development A Collection of ‘Post-Online’ Conversations
    (2020-09) Cartwright, Edward; Chapman, Gary; Davies, Jonathan S.; Gordon, Genevieve; Harman, Brian; Koenig, Brett; Lancastle, Neil; Lishman, Ros; Malan, Karen; Guarneros-Meza, Valeria; Nizalov, Denys; Orazgani, Ali; Orr, Russell; Omar, Paul; Saunders, Roger; Virmani, Swati; Allen, Thomas
    This monograph is a multi-authored collection consisting of our faculty’s post-online reflections. The objective was to gather thoughts and discussion around teaching and research during COVID-19. We aim to build and explore around ‘lived experiences’ to provide a reference point to help Continuous Professional Learning and Development (CPLD) activities. The section on ‘digital diaries’ consists of dialogues from staff categorised into varied themes. In the testimonies, staff have reflected around their challenges, targets, strengths, familiarity and how they managed to overcome difficulties and achieve goals. A special section, from the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity (CURA), is devoted to identifying how pandemic has intensified research challenges, highlighting the funding, time and location constraints on academic research.
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    What to keep and what to leave? Lessons to rethink your pedagogy
    (The Economics Network, 2022-05) Virmani, Swati