Falling costs of coordination and communication have allowed firms in rich countries to fragment their production process and offshore an increasing share of the value chain to low-wage countries. This paper proposes a Ricardian model where both of these effects are present and analyzes the...

This paper evaluates the real-time performance of the growth rate of the DSE-ECRI Indian leading index for exports for predicting cyclical downturns and upturns in the growth rate of Indian exports. The index comprises the 36-country real effective exchange rate and leading indices of...

Policy makers, therefore, often encounter the following questions while formulating the social security schemes. What are the priority social security needs of unorganized workers? What existing mechanisms and strategies do they use to meet the social security needs? Do social security needs and...

A comprehensive inventory of bilateral FTAs on a global scale, with sections on Africa and the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. It highlights the key points of each agreement, and details planned future developments. Background paper prepared for the...

Liberalisation and the policies thereafter have lead to a definite increase in production and export from the leather accessories industry in India. The focus of this paper is on migration and labour mobility in the leather accessories manufacture in Dharavi, Mumbai. The core data for the paper...

India is making sound progress on poverty elimination for those who can work. Poverty amongst the elderly will then become the dominant form of poverty in India, since the elderly do not work and thus do not benefit from higher wages. Simple dole solutions will not work. The only solution is a...

This paper uses aggregate and firm level data to examine the characteristics of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry in general and its geographical agglomeration in particular. It addresses the following research questions: 1) Are there geographical agglomerations in China’s...

The Policy Paper seeks to give voice to a local government vision on financing and stems from a shared understanding of the challenges we face. The Policy Paper contains 25 concrete recom- mendations for increasing local government access to infrastructure financing, particular- ly in developing...

In late March the release of data on sale of new homes in the US showed that it had dropped 10 per cent, the biggest drop in nine years. In the immediate aftermath of this report, the US currency gave up some ground against the Euro and other major currencies. Bond yields dropped and rate hike...