Posts

Showing posts with the label Bombay Stock Exchange

Decision Making as Output and Bounded Rationality

  The classical economics theories proceed on the assumption of rational agents. Rationality implies the economic agents undertake actions or exercise choices based on the cost-benefit analysis they undertake. The assumption further posits that there exists no information asymmetry and thus the agent is aware of all the costs and benefits associated with the choice he or she has exercised. The behavioral school contested the decision stating the decisions in practice are often irrational. Implied there is a continuous departure from rationality. Rationality in the views of the behavioral school is more an exception to the norm rather a rule. The past posts have discussed the limitations of this view by the behavioral school. Economics has often posited rationality in the context in which the choices are exercised rather than theoretical abstract view of rational action. Rational action in theory seems to be grounded in zero restraint situation yet in practice, there are numerous restra

Games Dhirubhai Played!

The success of the recent rights issues by Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) takes one’s memory to a wonderful anecdote in Gita Piramal’s Business Maharajas. The anecdote concerns Dhirubhai Ambani and his relationship with the stock market. The power he commanded on the markets did not emerge overnight. Nor did it come easy. In fact, if one has to term the coming of age of the Indian stock market, one has to go back to 1982 episode in the Bombay Stock Exchange.   Dhirubai loved perhaps roulettes and nothing better illustrated the episode of 1982. As India Today put it then, on one side of the ring lay rags to riches, ambitious, manipulative, high flying and perhaps possessed the most intelligent of the business brains, Dhirubhai Ambani. To Dhirubhai, it was hardly a decade and half that he had made it to the virtual top of the Who’s Who in the Indian industry. Up against him, again to borrow from the India Today, was a syndicate of stock market men, deeply drenched in the satta dyn