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This study intends to explore India's comparative advantage in the pollution-intensive product export with temporal and spatial analysis by applying an alternative measure of revealed comparative advantage index. The emission-intensive manufacturing commodities are mainly chosen as per the list published by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) of India to draw some inferences on India's pollution haven characteristics. For the spatial analysis, the 'dirty' comparative advantage is calculated for all the BRICS countries for the year 2017, and for the temporal analysis, the index value is calculated for 42 product groups at 3 digit SITC level from 2009 to 2017 to examine the structure of 'dirty' specialisation in India and its change over time. India is found at the top among the BRICS members for a maximum of 16 in 25 products. Among these 25 sectors, Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa are found having a comparative advantage in 4, 12, 11 and 10 products, respectively. In these comparatively advantageous products, Brazil ranked one in 75% and three in 25% of products. Russia ranked one in 33% and two in 67% of products. India among the BRICS members stood 1st at 62.5, 2nd and 3rd both at 18.75% cases, respectively. Findings reveal that pollution-intensive trade-exposed sectors successfully absorbed the stringent environmental regulation-shocks which brought in an additional burden of compliance cost upon trade competitiveness. The results of this study are more insightful for evaluating India's recent initiatives for stricter environmental regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comparative advantage (CA) measures for India's merchandise trade with high, middle income, and least developed countries, based on annual trade data for 16 product groups from 2003 to 2018, indicate that India has always had CA over all three groups in animal, food products, and textiles and clothing, and comparative disadvantage (CDA) in wood. Further, its CA over least developed countries and its CDA over middle income countries are more persistent than over other groups. The probabilities of switching from CDA to CA are higher than those for shifting from CA to CDA for all three groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There exists a rich empirical literature on the presence of intra-industry trade (IIT), i.e., simultaneous exports and imports within the same product groups and its determinants, both in the context of developed and developing countries. With deepening of Global Value Chains (GVCs) and International Production Networks (IPNs) across the globe, a rise in IIT has generally been noticed and India is no exception to this trend. The current paper analyses India's IIT in select sectors and decomposes the same in Vertical IIT (VIIT) and Horizontal IIT (HIIT) categories in terms of product quality, using trade data at the HS 6-digit level. It is observed that India's IIT is predominantly vertical in nature. India's VIIT has increased significantly over 2001-18 in select sectors, barring the exception of base-metals and iron-steel segments. The analysis next focuses on the determinants of India's VIIT during 2001-15 in a panel data framework by considering both country-specific and sectorspecific factors. The empirical results reveal that increase in capitalintensity, higher skill-intensity of workforce, multilateral as well as regional trade policy reforms, higher research and development orientation, trade facilitation measures and decline in industrial concentration facilitates India's cross-sector VIIT pattern. The interaction terms in the model indicates that growing sophistication in production may create greater scope for trade in vertically differentiated products. The results have interesting implications for India's recent manufacturing sector policy framework, particularly the 'Make-in-India' initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last 21 year period from 1996–2016, the total value of imports of rubber and rubber products grew at a rate of 17.66% compared to 14.18% growth rate in the value of exports. As a result of higher growth in imports and lower growth in exports, in the last 10 years, external trade in this segment had shown negative balance of trade consistently. In 2016–2017, the country had a negative balance of trade of US$ 414.76 million dollars. The broad objective of the present study is to identify products groups with comparative advantages in the global market. The study used methods such as Revealed Comparative Advantage, Revealed Symmetric Comparative Advantage and concentration ratio to analyse the comparative advantage of all the 17 rubber and rubber product groups (four digit level) under chapter 40 of the harmonised system nomenclature. Data from world integrated trade solution (WITS) during the period 1996–2016 are used for the analysis. Our results showed that despite a comparative disadvantage of the rubber sector at the aggregate level in the world market, the three product groups, viz, reclaimed rubber (HS 4003), inner tubes, of rubber (HS 4013), and hygienic or pharmaceutical articles (including teats) (HS 4014), exhibited comparative advantage consistently throughout the 21 year period. The two major product groups, viz., new pneumatic tyres of rubber (HS 4011) and other articles of vulcanised rubber other than hard rubber (HS 4016), which accounted for 68.68% of the total value of exports from the sector showed varied trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the impact of tariff and non-tariff reductions on firm-level gross value of output (GVO) and productivity for various types of Indian manufacturing MSMEs for the 2002–2007 period. We merge the 3rd (2001–2002) and 4th (2006–2007) All India Census data on Indian MSMEs to create a novel dataset that includes micro-enterprises and to calculate input and final goods tariffs, ERPs and NTBs for broad product groups using information from India's export–import policy, 1997–2003 and 2004–2009. After controlling for firm, industry, state and time-specific factors, we find tariff reductions have improved firm-level GVO and productivity for MSMEs which are technologically upgraded and quality certified. Further, the effects of input tariff reduction exceed those from final goods tariff reductions, i.e., the input sourcing channel is stronger than the final product competition channel. Liberalization of non-tariff barriers is found to have a positive effect on both GVO and productivity growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]