Background: Medical schools differ, particularly in their teaching, but it is unclear whether such differences matter, although influential claims are often made. The Medical School Differences (MedDifs) study brings together a wide range of measures of UK medical schools, including postgraduate performance, fitness to practise issues, specialty choice, preparedness, satisfaction, teaching styles, entry criteria and institutional factors. Method: Aggregated data were collected for 50 measures across 29 UK medical schools. Data include institutional history (e.g. rate of production of hospital and GP specialists in the past), curricular influences (e.g.

Background: What subjects UK medical schools teach, what ways they teach subjects, and how much they teach those subjects is unclear. Whether teaching differences matter is a separate, important question. This study provides a detailed picture of timetabled undergraduate teaching activity at 25 UK medical schools, particularly in relation to problem-based learning (PBL). Method: The Analysis of Teaching of Medical Schools (AToMS) survey used detailed timetables provided by 25 schools with standard 5-year courses. Timetabled teaching events were coded in terms of course year, duration, teaching format, and teaching content. Ten schools used PBL. Teaching times from timetables were validated against two other studies that had assessed GP teaching and lecture, seminar, and tutorial times. Results: A total of 47,258 timetabled teaching events in the academic year 2014/2015 were analysed, including SSCs (student-selected components) and elective studies. A typical UK medical student receives 3960 timetabled hours of teaching during their 5-year course. There was a clear difference between the initial 2 years which mostly contained basic medical science content and the later 3 years which mostly consisted of clinical teaching, although some clinical teaching occurs in the first 2 years. Medical schools differed in duration, format, and content of teaching. Two main factors underlay most of the variation between schools, Traditional vs PBL teaching and Structured vs Unstructured teaching. A curriculum map comparing medical schools was constructed using those factors. PBL schools differed on a number of measures, having more PBL teaching time, fewer lectures, more GP teaching, less surgery, less formal teaching of basic science, and more sessions with unspecified content. Discussion: UK medical schools differ in both format and content of teaching. PBL and non-PBL schools clearly differ, albeit with substantial variation within groups, and overlap in the middle. The important question of whether differences in teaching matter in terms of outcomes is analysed in a companion study (MedDifs) which examines how teaching differences relate to university infrastructure, entry requirements, student perceptions, and outcomes in Foundation Programme and postgraduate training.

Purpose Transparent and fair price discovery is essential to commodity market participants in the trade value chain for competitive benefit. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the price discovery of Indian cardamom at e-auction, spot and futures markets in addition to the existence of the day of the week effect at e-auction apart from exploring a novel price risk management framework. Design/methodology/approach This study used Johansen co-integration, vector error correction model, Granger causality and regression with dummy variables to understand a day of the week effect in high-value agri-commodity of cardamom e-auction prices. These price data were based on authenticated sources of Spices Board India and Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd. Findings The statistical results indicate price discovery exists in the e-auction market and it leads to spot and futures prices. cardamom e-auction prices are negatively related to cardamom futures and positively related to spot prices. It also finds the non-existence of the day of the week effect in the high-value cardamom e-auction system in India. The study revealed that a cardamom e-auction is more active in price discovery than a cardamom futures contract. Research limitations/implications These results shall facilitate policymakers to explore intervention of online forward market mechanism at the national level to ensure price discovery and market efficiency. However, the study did not explore reasons for the non-equilibrium of a cardamom futures contract with spot and e-auction market. Practical implications The results of this study are useful in understanding the price discovery of cardamom e-auction and its role in the spot and futures market. Cardamom price discovery depends upon the e-auction system; any change of auction policy shall be binding on Indian cardamom prices. The introduction of an online forward market mechanism as described in the paper shall facilitate price risk management apart from improving the efficiency of price discovery. Originality/value This is the first study considering cardamom e-auction, spot and futures prices in the price discovery process in India. Statistical results of a day of the week effect clearly show no significant volatility of cardamom prices during the week. Besides, this study did not find the role of cardamom futures contracts intended to serve the economic function of price discovery and price risk management. Hence, suggests policy intervention for implementing an online Forward Market mechanism for Indian cardamom to ensure market efficiency and manage price risk.

Globalization and liberalization policies facilitated national and international commodity markets to integrate with each other. This integration facilitated price transmission and market efficiency of commodities at domestic markets, leading traders across the globe to exploit opportunities. India is one of the vibrant and emerging economies in the world absorbing these economic features and integrating its markets with the world. This article, focusing on the Indian sugar market, explores market integration of sugar prices with the US, UK and global average prices and also contributes a policy dimension to enhance the competitiveness of the Indian sugar sector. The article, using Johansen’s co-integration with a vector error correction model (VECM), finds the existence of market integration of Indian sugar prices with international prices. However, the average Indian sugar prices are higher than those in other markets, with the support of government price protection policies. These higher prices motivated to increase sugar production in the country. The lower cane prices of Brazil, Australia and Thailand pose challenges in international markets for Indian sugar. Despite this, the Indian sugar sector has a competitive advantage in becoming a great energy source by focusing on ethanol production, which would lead to reducing its international dependency for oil supplies. In addition, the sector can also contribute to rural socio-economic development through adopting technology to produce other by-products rather than merely concentrating on sugar.

India is one of the natural rubber producing countries in the world. Prices of natural rubber depends upon many important factors including import policy, crude oil prices, rubber production, demand, vehicle sales, international rubber production and prices etc., In the era of globalisation, Indian market of natural rubber has been integrated with international markets resulting any changes in the international factors would have simultaneous impact on rubber prices. In the recent past, the price of natural rubber in India has fallen from all time high to lowest within a short period of time. In this regard, this paper focusing on global determinants such as prices of crude oil, USD/INR, rubber prices of Thailand and Malaysia evaluated their influence on Indian rubber prices. This study finds the significant influence of crude oil, USD INR and Rubber prices of Thailand than other factors on India rubber prices.