20. Miracles and Debacles: In Defense of Trade Openness: [Includes tables and references]  The paper argues that without trade openness, there is no sustained growth and that trade is rarely responsible for stagnation or decline in incomes over a long period. (Also see #15 below).

19. India’s Trade Reform: Progress, Impact and Future Strategy: I offer a comprehensive analysis of India's trade policy, particularly since 1991, and its impact on the economy.  I provide evidence showing that trade liberalization has had a major impact on the quality and availability of goods and on services growth.  The evidence on productivity growth in the industrial sector varies across studies, however.  I also explain why India lags behind China and what India must do to catch up.  The strategy for future liberalization, including a possible U.S.-India free trade area, is discussed. 

18.  India in the 1980s and 1990s: A Triumph of Reforms: [Substantially revised version of "India in the 1980s: Weak Reforms, Fragile Growth"] Bradford DeLong and Dani Rodrik have argued that reforms in India cannot be credited with higher growth because growth rate had crossed the 5 percent mark in the 1980s, well before the launch of the July 1991 reforms. This is wrong reading of the Indian experience for two reasons. First, liberalization was already under way during the 1980s and it played a crucial role in stimulating growth during that decade. Second, growth in the 1980s was fragile and unsustainable. The more systematic and systemic reforms of the 1990s, discussed in detail in this paper, gave rise to more sustainable growth.  The paper concludes with a discussion of why the growth rate in India nevertheless continues to trail that of China.

17.  Aid through Trade: An Effective Option?  (Forthcoming in a volume to be published by the Center for Global Development).  I examine the scope for and desirability of the U.S. assistance to the poor countries through three separate trade policy measures: one-way trade preferences as, for example, under the Generalized System of Preferences; bilateral trade preferences as under free trade area arrangements as under the U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement; and multilateral trade liberalization as under the Uruguay Round Agreement.  My principal conclusion is that of these three forms of market access, only the last one is both desirable and feasible.  I also argue that further opening of developed country markets, no matter what form it takes, can help the poor countries only in a limited way.  Despite all the rhetoric and assertions to the contrary, the bitter and sad truth is that even if developed countries were to open their markets fully without asking for reciprocal liberalization and without any side conditions, few poor countries will succeed in achieving significant growth and poverty reduction purely as a consequence of this opening up. The explanation for the poor growth performance of many poor countries is to be found not in the barriers to their exports in the rich countries--though these barriers do impose a burden on them--but in their own domestic policies and political environment that governs the internal investment climate.

16. Trade and Food Security: Conceptualizing the Linkages: How will the liberalization of trade in agriculture including food impact developing countries?  To answer, we must distinguish between importers and exporters of the products as also between liberalization in the developed and developing countries.  The paper makes these distinctions and outlines a conceptual framework within which to address the question.  It also offers a simple model within which the impact of the liberalization on the poor can be analyzed. The paper argues that since the removal of domestic and export subsidies on agricultural goods will raise the prices these products, the large majority of the least developed countries, which are net agricultural importers, will lose from the change.  This is in contrast to the claims by many senior World Bank officials and NGOs such as Oxfam that blame agricultural protectionism in the OECD countries as the principal barrier to growth in the least developed countries today.   

15. Miracles and Debacles: Do Free-trade Skeptics have a Case?: [Revised March 2004] Evidence gives developing countries little reason to prefer protection over free trade. Trade has been an integral part of all growth miracles (defined ass countries that have grown at 3 percent or more in per-capita terms on a sustained basis) during the last 40 years.  At the same time, there is no evidence linking the debacles (defined as countries that experiences a decline in the per-capita income on a sustained basis) to trade.  Nor has trade contributed to increased poverty; on the contrary, openness and growth are invariably accompanied by a reduction in poverty.  Even the assertions by the World Bank that globalization-driven fast growth during the 1990s has not served the poor well, leaving the absolute number of the poor unchanged at 1.2 billion are based on faulty evidence.  

14.  EU Preferential Trade Policies and Developing Countries: (World Economy, Vol. 25, No.10, November 2002, pp. 1415-32) In this paper, I offer an overview and qualitative assessment of the EC preferential trade arrangements with developing countries.  My main conclusion is that beyond the obvious rent transfers accompanying such preferences, a definite positive impact of these arrangements on developing countries cannot be detected.  To some degree, given the multi-layered European arrangements, it is not entirely clear what these preferences have meant: preferences to one set of developing countries may have come at the expense of another.  The preferences may have also reduced pressures for trade liberalization within the preference-receiving countries thereby undermining the internal policy reform that could have promoted faster expansion of trade and possibly growth.  Therefore, on balance, developing countries as a group will benefit more from a less discriminatory approach centered on the forthcoming Doha Round with the least developed countries assisted through direct aid.

13.  Developing Countries at Doha: A Political Economy Analysis:  (World Economy, Vol. 25, No. 9, September 2002, pp. 1205-33) The paper offers a comprehensive analysis of what developing countries accomplished and failed to accomplish and why.  Among the questions addressed are: Did  developing countries get shortchanged in the Uruguay Round and if yes in what way? Does the Doha outcome reverse this?  Is the success in the area of intellectual property rights truly as major as has been made out in the media? Why do so many developing countries oppose the Singapore issues? Why do developing countries have very limited bargaining power?  How can they improve upon it? And what are the implications of China joining the WTO?

12.  India at Doha:  Retrospect and Prospect: (Economic and Political Weekly, January 26, 2002).  With the Doha dust settled,  it is a good time to reflect on what has been achieved, how it was achieved, what was India’s role, how this role was perceived and why?  It is also a good time to draw lessons from the experience since we must get down to the business of developing positions on the negotiations to which we have committed ourselves along with other WTO members in Doha.

11. Wanted: Jubilee 2010 Against Protectionism: (with Jagdish Bhagwati) (A shorter version published in the Financial Times)  The recent castigation of rich-country protectionism by the heads of international agencies and in the media, while welcome, is little more than a reiteration of the obvious.  But unaccompanied by a simultaneous focus on the protectionism of the poor countries, it has led to an encouragement of a number of fallacies that pose serious threat to the making of good trade policy in the poor countries.  It also raises the important question: what can we do to effectively begin to dismantle this protectionism? We bring to light the fallacies and suggest a Jubilee 2010 movement to end protectionism in the rich countries.

10.  The Millennium Round and Developing Countries: Negotiating Strategies and Areas of Benefits: (UNCTAD and Center for International Development, G-24 Discussion Papers Series, No. 1, March 2000)  Written prior to the WTO conference in Seattle, this paper identifies negotiating strategies and areas of benefits from a new multilateral round of trade negotiations for developing countries.  The areas covered in the paper include trade liberalization, multilateral agreement on investment, dispute settlement, anti-dumping, and labor and environmental standards.  Now that a new round has been launched as a result of the November 2001 WTO Ministerial Conference in Doha, insights offered in the paper are doubly relevant to developing countries.

9.  E-commerce, WTO and Developing Countries:  (World Economy 23, No. 8, August 2000, 959-978)  Electronic commerce offers unprecedented opportunities to both developing and developed countries.  In the short run, the gains are likely to be concentrated in developed countries but, in the long run, developing countries have more to benefit.  This is because, in the short run, developing countries lack the infrastructure necessary to take full advantage of Internet.  But in the long run, they can leap frog, skipping some of the stages in the development of information technology through which developed countries have had to pass.  developing countries such as India that have the capacity to export skilled services through Internet should aggressively negotiate market access with developed countries in the future WTO negotiations.  This involves negotiations on two fronts.  One, they should seek liberalization by developed countries in sectors in which they have comparative advantage.  And two, they should seek recognition of their education, qualifications, requirements met, or licenses or certificates granted in the markets of other countries.

8.  TRIPs and the WTO: An Uneasy Marriage: (In Bhagwati, J., ed., The Next Negotiating Round: Examining the Agenda for Seattle, Proceedings of the Conference held at Columbia University, July 23-24, 1999, 291-102, chapter 11)  I argue that the inclusion of Intellectual property rights (IPR) into the WTO cannot be defended in the manner we defend trade liberalization.  The latter is a win-win change whereas the former involves a redistribution of income from the poor to rich countries. I offer some simple economics of the extension of developed country IPR standards to developing countries.

7. Trade Labor Link: A Post Seattle Analysis: (In Drabek, Zdenek, Globalization under Threat, Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar 101-123).  The demand for a WTO working party on labour standards by the US at Seattle returned the contentious issue of the link between trade and labour standards to the center stage of multilateral trade negotiations. This paper offers a detailed and systematic analysis of the subject.  I begin first by dissecting the intellectual case for the link.  I then describe the so-called 'core' ILO Conventions. In section 4, I identify the sources of pressures for higher labour standards that led to the failure in Seattle as also the pressure being exerted within the current system on some developing countries to raise labour standards to preserve their privileges under the Generalized System of Preferences.

6.  Labor Standards and Trade Sanctions: Right End Wrong Means: (Forthcoming in Devashish Mitra and Rana Hasan, ed., volume to be published by North Holland). The paper recognizes the importance of promoting higher labor standards faster but rejects the idea of linking them with market access via the WTO instrumentality.  It then considers alternative instruments such as ILO, socio-labels, education and trade liberalization.

5.  Free Trade at Border:  (In Bhagwati, J., ed., The Next Negotiating Round: Examining the Agenda for Seattle, Proceedings of the Conference Held at Columbia University, July 23-24, 1999, 209-223, chapter 20).  This paper discusses the desirability and feasibility of free trade in industrial and agricultural goods by a certain date.  An inventory of the existing barriers in both developing and developed countries is taken and a case made that the scope for a mutually beneficial bargain that brings about free trade exists.

4.  Alternative Approaches to Reciprocal Tariff Liberalization: (Forthcoming in a guide for negotiations for developing countries edited by Bernard Hoekman): The paper outlines various approaches to reciprocal reductions in tariffs and and their relative merits.  If the objective is to achieve maximum liberalization worldwide, an across-the-board approach that lowers higher tariffs more such as that based on the Swiss formula would be the right choice.  The across-the-board approach minimizes the room for successful lobbying by political powerful sectors, which often happen to be the most protected sectors in the first place.  Moreover, a formula that lowers high tariffs more reduces the dispersion in tariffs and hence effective protection in all sectors.  A formula approach also has the advantage that it does not tie up negotiating resource in a major way as do sector-by-sector negotiations.

3.  The Regionalism Debate:  An Overview: (World Economy, June 1999, 477-511) The paper offers a comprehensive review of the debate on merits and demerits of preferential trade areas and concludes against promoting such arrangements.  Concepts of trade creation and trade diversion, implications for multilateral liberalization, open regionalism and deep integration are carefully discussed and critically evaluated.

2.  Evaluating the Case for Export Subsidies:  (Highlights of the paper covered in the Economics Focus column of the Economist, December 14, 2000.  Forthcoming in David Greenaway, Reanto Flôres and Germán Calfat, ed., Essays in Honor of Mathew Tharakan; also available as Policy Research Working Paper 2276, World Bank, January 2000)  With import-substitution policies having failed and discredited, there has been a shift in favor of interventions on behalf of export interests.  In this paper, I argue that, upon close scrutiny, the arguments for such interventions suffer from many of the same flaws as the old arguments for import substitution..

1.  The Economics and Politics of Uniform Tariffs: Many policy economists advocate replacing a highly variegated structure of tariffs by a uniform tariff.  This idea is not generally endorsed by academic economists.  What are the sources of differences between these two camps and under what circumstances uniform tariffs can be justified is the subject of this paper.  I conclude that the defense of a uniform-tariff regime lies in the politics of tariff making: the adoption of a uniform-tariff rule gives rise to a free-rider problem in lobbying resulting in reduced lobbying as well as a low level of protection.  

India

5.  South Asia:  Does Preferential Trade Liberalization Make Sense?: (Forthcoming: World Economy, 2003) This paper systematically analyzes the issue of trade liberalization in South Asia region and offers a qualitative assessment of alternative approaches.  I compare two broad approaches to trade liberalization: nondiscriminatory and preferential.  The former approach can be pursued on a unilateral basis by each country in the region, on a concerted basis by the countries in the region, or multilateral basis under the auspices of the WTO.  The latter approach can take the form of crisscrossing bilateral free trade areas between various countries in the region or a region-wide free trade area. The view I take in the paper is that the move towards preferential trading is a mistake, at least from the viewpoint of India.  India continues to have very high trade barriers so that the scope for trade diversion and the losses accompanying it are likely to be considerable.  Business lobbies being relatively powerful in most of the countries in the region, they are likely to exploit the rules of origin and sectoral exceptions in these arrangements in ways that will maximize trade diversion and minimize trade creation.  In as much as the rules of origin give bureaucrats power, employment and opportunities to share in the rents created by tariff preferences, they too will become active parties to the diversionary tactics of business lobbies.  Therefore, the member countries are better advised to proceed along nondiscriminatory lines in achieving further liberalization. 

4.  The WTO Trade Policy Review of India, 1998:  (World Economy, August 1999, 799-824)  This paper offers a critical review of the WTO Trade Policy Review of India (TPRI), 1998. It concludes that TPRI not only provides a detailed and up to date discussion of India's trade policies but also offers an excellent coverage of domestic policies.  The latter is especially relevant in the case of India since reforms of domestic policies there are needed as urgently as trade policies. 

3.  India's Economic Reforms: What has been Achieved?  What Remains to be Done? (EDRC Policy Brief No. 2, Asian Development Bank):  This short paper discusses the achievements of the 1990s and the reforms waiting to be undertaken during 2000s.

2.  China's Export Strategy:  What Can We Learn From It?: (Finance and Development, June 1995)  The paper reviews the export strategy of China and suggests that the country for which the Chinese experience is most relevant is India. Both are highly populous and, by developing-country standards, large economies. They began their development process approximately at the same time and stressed self-reliance. Both relied increasingly heavily on import substitution policies and ended up with a highly capital intensive production structure. China changed course in 1979 while India continued (with modest liberalization) on the old course. In 1991, in many ways, India stood where China stood in 1979.  The trade-to-GDP ratio was the same as China's in 1979. Import and investment controls were rampant and the domestic currency was overvalued.

1. The Millennium Budget: Behind its Time:  (Published in the Economic and Political Weekly, March 4, 2000)  The paper gives a critical assessment of the 2000-01 budget.  It argues that there is no attempt by the government to use its first budget as the launch pad for a programme that would take India to its deserved status of a mature economy by the year 2010.