Article HistoryThis study discusses the impact of digitisation on India's two most vibrant and high potential segments for future growth: services sector and MSME segments. We find that there is a significant rise in growth rate for the India's services sector and MSME segment since 2000. This was majorly due to digitisation. Digitisation automates the product and process as a result of which both quality and production increases. Despite having a high potential for future growth, India's MSMEs segment has suffered due to less 'access to finance'. Digitisation improves the performances of MSMEs and helps in reducing financial obstacles by providing alternative financing options to MSME. Increasing access to alternative finance has resulted in the significant rise in MSMEs operating performance, profitability and productivity. The high performance of the India's services sector and MSME segment contribute significantly to the overall trade growth. This paper finds that there is a high impact of digitisation on the inclusive growth of the overall Indian economy and trade.Contribution/ Originality: The paper's primary contribution is finding that the significant rise in the recent growth rate of the service sector and MSME segment was majorly due to digitization. Digitalization resulted in the high performance of these sectors which contributed significantly to the inclusive growth of the overall Indian economy and trade.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown announcements by governments have created uncertainty in business operations globally. For the first time, a health shock has impacted the stock markets forcefully. India, one of the major emerging markets, has witnessed a massive fall of around 40% in its major stock indices’ value. Therefore, we examined the short-term impact of the pandemic on the Indian stock market’s major index (NIFTY50) and its constituent sectors. For our analysis, we used three different models (constant return model, market model, and market-adjusted model) of event study methodology. Our results are heterogeneous and largely depend on the sectors. All the sectors were impacted temporarily, yet the financial sector faced the worst. Sectors like pharma, consumer goods, and IT had positive or limited impacts. We discuss the potential explanations for the same. These results may be useful for investors in safeguarding equity portfolios from unforeseen shocks and making better investment decisions to avoid large, unexpected losses.

This article investigates the excess volatility in Bitcoin prices using an unbiased extreme value volatility estimator. We capture the time-varying nature of the excess volatility using bootstrap, multi-horizon, sub-sampling and rolling-window approaches. We observe that Bitcoin price changes are almost efficient. Although Bitcoin prices exhibit high volatility and show signs of excess volatility for a few periods, it is decreasing over time. After controlling for the outliers, we also notice that the Bitcoin market shows signs of increasing maturity. Overall, Bitcoin prices show a sign of increasing efficiency with decreasing volatility. Our findings have implications for investors making investment decisions and for regulators making policy choices.

This paper provides a review of the literature on key matters related to the popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Another key motivation of this paper is to understand the underlying principle of this digital currency from the economic and financial point of view. For the survey to be comprehensive, the paper is categorized into varied themes: price dynamics, volatility, bubble dynamics, mode of recognition in the financial market, efficiency, economics, social media and investor sentiment, and lastly regulation and legality. We argue that Bitcoin is still in an embryonic phase and needs to evolve with time especially keeping in pace with technological advancements. It should be robust to get accepted as an alternative currency and be able to prevent any fraudulent exploitation.

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