We express a doubt on the conventional wisdom namely, of a positive relationship between wage and productivity, of a formal sector firm in a developing economy where the firm can either go for subcontracting to the informal sector to minimize wage cost along with apprehension of extra-legal cost...

An interesting contemporary research question in trade theory deals with the possibility of rising wage inequality across the globe. A few possible explanations have been provided so far. We provide a natural explanation and a rigorous proof of the phenomenon by arguing that liberalizing trade...

Stringent regulations coupled with corruption generate and sustain extra legal or informal transactions in the developing countries. Does trade related reform discourage informal activities and corruption? This paper attempts to analyze such a phenomenon. An import competing firm allocates...

As a country progressively engages in international trade, its factors of production will enter increasingly into the export sector, where their return is higher, compared to the import competing sector. At the regional level too those states, which can attune their production structure to...

Lucas (1976) argued that interventionist policies in macroeconomics may fail because the policies themselves affect the optimal behavior of private agents and hence the associated response parameters. We extend Lucas's argument and propose that a highly controlled and regulated environment leads...