Major economic reforms undertaken since 1991 have brought the Indian economy into a new phase of development directed toward becoming globally competitive through the opening of trade, foreign investment, and technology inflows. The private sector is expected to play a lead role, with a corresponding reduction in the role played by the public sector. This book is aimed at analyzing the comparative static effects of selected post-1991 trade and domestic policy reforms on trade, factor prices, economic welfare, and the intersectoral allocation of resources. The study relies on a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model that has been specially designed to analyze the potential economic effects of India's policy reforms. The model was developed in a collaborative effort involving the National Council of Applied Economic Research in New Delhi and the University of Michigan. Patterned after the Michigan CGE Model of World Production and Trade that has been in use for more than two decades, the India CGE model features closer attention to special characteristics of India's economic structure, including more agricultural sector detail, allowance for state ownership, and administered pricing. The conclusions of the study suggest that the policy reforms will yield increased real returns to land, labor, and capital, and shift the terms of trade in favor of Indian agriculture. Lastly, not only are there efficiency-enhancing intersectoral shifts in resource allocation but there are notable increases in scale economies across the Indian manufacturing sectors. Rajesh Chadha and Sanjib Pohit are Economists at the National Council of Applied Economic Research in New Delhi. Alan V. Deardorff and Robert M. Stern are Professors of Economics and Public Policy, University of Michigan.

This book is designed to clarify India's interests in the World Trade Organization's Doha Development Agenda and to provide a blueprint for its strategy in multilateral negotiations. The focus is on facilitating domestic and external policy reforms that can serve to bolster India's participation in the multilateral trading system and to enhance the effectiveness of India's trade and related policies in achieving developmental goals. Individual chapters address the economic effects on India of the Uruguay Round Negotiations and the prospective Doha Agenda negotiations; the implications of the abolition of the Multi-Fiber Agreement; services issues and liberalization; telecommunications policy reforms; foreign direct investment; intellectual property rights; competition policy; government procurement; standards and technical barriers; trade and environment; and, finally, a comprehensive analysis of the major issues coupled with concrete proposals to guide India's participation in the Doha Development Agenda.

This book reviews India's liberalisation measures in the last decade, in cognisance of the impact of the country's World Trade Oraganisation (WTO) membership on the same. The collection of articles by subject experts recognises that the changes mandated by WTO membership are but one of the three-pronged liberlisation measures that the country has been subjected to-in the external, domestic (industrial policies) and financial sectors. The lucid analyses bear out that rather than being WTO-induced, external liberalisation of most sectors has been part of India's general economic reform programme, having been shaped by domestic compulsions. India's Liberalisation Experience: Hostage to the WTO? also analyses how the country has coped with and benefited from its obligations and rights as a WTO member. It attempts to evaluate the impact of the domestic reforms on the country's economy and the implications thereof on its performance as a WTO negotiator. It tries to dispel the myths regarding the impact of international trade negotiations on India's ongoing reform processes and its developmental and poverty/livelihood concerns. Thus, it will appeal not only to WTO experts, but also to trade policy analysts, academicians, research students, policy-makers, scholars and economists.

This book examines the implications of trade reforms with reference to the 1991 reforms for India's manufacturing sector. The gradualist nature of the reform process, the move from a restrictive policy regime to an open one, and the unevenness of the reforms across sectors make the Indian economy a relevant context for understanding the welfare implications of trade reforms.

Openness has affected neither poverty nor inequality adversely. When surveyed, people in disproportionately large volumes from all groups say that their fortunes are improving. The essays in this volume show that trade oppenness has helped reduce poverty among most social groups.