Worldwide, free trade agreements (FTAs) have remained a debatable issue. This paper tries to demystify the recent myths that have surrounded the FTA strategy of India, especially as part of the Look East Policy. The paper does this by analysing the determinants of Intra-Industry Trade (IIT),...

This paper for the first time employs the Time Varying Panel Smooth Transition Regression (TV-PSTR) approach to model the dynamic adjustments of firms and the evolution of India’s industrial structure in the bigger setting of decades against the backdrop of India’s unexpected dramatic...

This paper employs the Time Varying Panel Smooth Transition Regression (TV-PSTR) model to investigate the effects of India’s dramatic trade liberalization starting from 1991 on market efficiency and productivity growth using Indian manufacturing firm data. We find that the effects of...

This note shows that in a developing economy, agriculture and Special Economic Zones (SEZ) can grow simultaneously without affecting one another if an appropriate subsidy policy is designed by the government. We consider increasing returns brought about by external economies of scale in the...

This paper studies the causal impact of credit constraints on exporting firms. We exploit a natural experiment provided by two policy changes in India, first in 1998 which made small scale firms eligible for subsidized direct credit, and a subsequent reversal in policy in 2000 wherein some of...

This paper aims to listen and understand the voices of the self-employed workers of a shrinking traditional iron kitchen utensil making microenterprise cluster based at Patardih village of Deoghar district in state of Jharkhand in India. The point of view of these self-employed workers have been...

We investigate the link between industrial deregulation, trade reform and unit-level productivity using two unique microeconomic data sets from India. We use disaggregated data on the dismantling of the the quot;License Rajquot; in India (operating from the 1950s onwards) and find that removal...

This paper evaluates the effect on firm-level export outcomes of the Cash Incentive Scheme for Exports program provided by the Government of Nepal. The analysis utilizes customs-level data for 2011-14, combined with information on the subsidy payments made to individual firms provided by the...

We derive exact conditions relating the distributions of firm productivity, sales, output, and markups to the form of demand in monopolistic competition. Applications include a new “CREMR” demand function (Constant Revenue Elasticity of Marginal Revenue): it is necessary and sufficient for...