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Due to rapid globalisation the processes through which goods and services are produced and consumed have been developing at a fast pace. Given the changing patterns of global trade, many countries have become more active in negotiating regional trade agreements. While there is visible overlapping of trade agreements across the world, new mega-regional trade agreements now occupy centre stage, diversely benefitting trading nations. This paper discusses India's participation in and the likely effects of some mega-regional trade agreements with a focus on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Based on in-depth analyses, the authors highlight some major impacts of the evolving trade agreements and offers time bound roadmaps for Indiato benefit from them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optimal discrimination among several groups can be achieved by simultaneous diagonalization of pooled within-group, W, and among-group, A, sums of squares and cross-product matrices formed by utilizing axial-ratio sample statistics of quartz grains belonging to different sieve grades. This method maximizes the ratio of among-group cross products to within-group cross product quadratic forms (V'AV/V'WV)and simultaneously yields discriminant scores whose correlation coefficients are zero for group means as well as for within each group. This procedure enables a simple Euclidean distance measure for partitioning the discriminant space for assignment. Although W-1and Amatrices are symmetric, the W-1 Amatrix needed for multigroup discrimination is asymmetric and hence the eigenstructure of W-1 Ais obtained by simultaneous diagonalization of Wand Amatrices. The first four sample statistics (mean, standard deviation, skewness, kurtosis) of normalized axial-ratios are required for discrimination, although the mean and standard deviation are the most important discriminators.

Mineral deposits are characterized by certain continuity of assay values, thickness and top and bottom surfaces of ore zones etc., which are amenable to stochastic modelling with respect to spatial coordinates. The French School (Matheron, 1963) introduced rather difficult terminology of semi-variogram, kriging etc. for quantitative assessment of reserves and average grade of mining property under the assumption of second-order stationarity of first differenced (d=1) data. A more general, powerful and well-known time-domain (spatial) stochastic models (ARIMA (p, d, q); based on Box and Jenkins, 1970, 1976; Anderson, 1976) are introduced herein which include Matheron Model (d=1) as a special case.