What Was Protected? Measuring India's Tariff Barriers 1968-1997

We investigate the inter-industry structure of protection in India, asking how much protection each industry receives and how this changes over time. We calculate, compare and analyze several measures of trade protection across agricultural, manufacturing and service industries. Protection levels were high when ex ante tariffs are used as the basis of measurement, supporting earlier studies. However, when ex post tariff rates are used, a number of sectors exhibit negative effective protection rates. In addition, exposte rates show greater variability and provide a different ranking of the degree of protection by industry when compared to ex ante tariff-based measures.