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Development cooperation is an integral part of India's foreign policy and India has been extending cooperation to its fellow developing countries since even before its independence in 1947. In present times, India's development coop- eration is manifested through its 'development compact' comprising five com- ponents, namely capacity building and skill transfer, technology and related partnerships, development finance (which includes concessional loans and lines of credit [LOCs]), grants, and trade and investment. Of late, Indian extension of LoCs through the EXIM Bank of India has also become a prominent modality of development cooperation. However, in many a cases it has been seen that the projects faced a number of challenges for effective delivery. This article explores these challenges and other issues related to quality and timely delivery of the projects. It also explains the evolution of the scheme IDEAS and discusses new guidelines by the Government of India.

Empirical results indicate to what extent judges recognize similanties between payoff matrices that vary in game theoretic information conditions. Judges failed to note similarities in patterns of payoffs between matrices but did recognize patterns of behavior of an opponent.

PurposeDespite the spread in usage and ownership of credit cards, few studies have examined its effect on consumer debt in developing nations. The main purpose of this paper is to understand consumers' attitude and spending behavior using credit cards.Design/methodology/approachThis study is based on a questionnaire survey conducted in Malaysia. Based on an extensive review of literature, a model is developed to identify the psychographic factors that influence the consumer attitudes toward using credit cards.FindingsThe paper found support for some of the theoretical expectations and lends support to some of the earlier deviations reported in the literature.Practical implicationsThe findings are likely to be important to banks and financial institutions issuing credit cards, as they help managers to have a better understanding of cardholders in Malaysia and their attitude and behavior toward usage of credit cards.Originality/valueThis paper makes a valuable contribution given the fact that there is a dearth of empirical studies of this nature focusing on Malaysia.

AbstractVarious important and useful quantities or measures that characterize the topological network structure are usually investigated for a network, then they are averaged over the samples. In this paper, we propose an explicit representation by the beforehand averaged adjacency matrix over samples of growing networks as a new general framework for investigating the characteristic quantities. It is applied to some network models, and shows a good approximation of degree distribution asymptotically. In particular, our approach will be applicable through the numerical calculations instead of intractable theoretical analyses, when the time-course of degree is a monotone increasing function like power law or logarithm.

Matrix graphite (MG) with incompletely graphitized binder used in high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs) is commonly suspected to exhibit lower oxidation resistance in air. In order to reveal the oxidation performance, the oxidation behavior of newly developed A3-3 MG at the temperature range from 500 to 950°C in air was studied and the effect of oxidation on the compressive strength of oxidized MG specimens was characterized. Results show that temperature has a significant influence on the oxidation behavior of MG. The transition temperature between Regimes I and II is ~700°C and the activation energy (Ea) in Regime I is around 185 kJ/mol, a little lower than that of nuclear graphite, which indicates MG is more vulnerable to oxidation. Oxidation at 550°C causes more damage to compressive strength of MG than oxidation at 900°C. Comparing with the strength of pristine MG specimens, the rate of compressive strength loss is 77.3% after oxidation at 550°C and only 12.5% for oxidation at 900°C. Microstructure images of SEM and porosity measurement by Mercury Porosimetry indicate that the significant compressive strength loss of MG oxidized at 550°C may be attributed to both the uniform pore formation throughout the bulk and the preferential oxidation of the binder.