Impact of FTAs on Trade Flows: A Study oldie India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement

The current global business environment has undergone a significant change in the last few decades driven by changes in the patterns of trade and investment flows. This has been accompanied by a strong wave of regional economic integration in the world economy, visible through the increasing number of RTAs (regional trading agreements) in different parts of theworld. Economic integration in the South Asian region has seen characterized by multilateral trade liberalization, alongside regional, sub-regional and bilateral liberalization. This paperexamines the impact of the India Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement (ISFLTA) on trade flows between the two countries. The study uses the gravity model in a panel data estimation using the Weighed Least Squares Method for the period 1990-2014. The results provide evidence that the FTA has promoted trade between the countries. It was found that the FTA has created large tradecreation effects. There is no diversion effect of exports of other South Asian countries to India andSri Lanka. Larger trade creation effects that exceed the diversion effects indicate the welfare gainsfrom the free trade agreement between India and Sri Lanka.

Climate Change, Agricultural Production and Food Security in India

Climate change is a critical issue in the context of the Indian economy. The country's geographical dynamics and the presence of high level of poor and food insecure population add toits vulnerability to climate change. India is home to about 24.5 per cent of the undernourished people in the world. Increased occurrence of temperature extremes, increase in the number ofwarm days and nights, altered rainfall patterns, increased frequency of deficit monsoons andheavy precipitation events have been observed in the country. Further, these trends are projectedto continue. In this context, the study discusses the climate change trends and their impact onagriculture and food security in the country. The empirical analysis using Ordinary Least Squares(OLS) and Instrumental Variables ((IV) regressions shows that climate especially temperatures adversely impact both agriculture and food security. The importance of promotion of appropriate strategies to address agricultural productivity especially enhanced irrigation facilities, infrastructure and adoption of direct interventionist measures addressing food insecurity in thecountry is underlined by the research article.

Impact of Fiscal Deficit on Real Interest Rates

The study tries to uncover the relationship between fiscal deficits and real interest rates using theVector Auto Regressive Model. The relationship is estimated using three variants of nominal interest rates. It results suggest that the direction of causality runs from real interest rates to fiscaldeficit. Further, there is no financial crowding out effect in case of India. Hence, the argument of public expenditure crowding out private investment by making borrowing more expensive cannotbe used as argument for cutting down on the much needed investments in various public infrastructure. The findings also indicate that it is difficult to isolate the effect of fiscal deficit fromother influences in the economy.

Technical Alliances as a Strategy to Create Knowledge: Analysis of Patterns across Indian Pharmaceutical Firms

It is widely acknowledged that knowledge creation is the major driver of firms’ growth and lies atthe very heart of the competitive process. Technical alliances are increasingly adopted as astrategy to create knowledge creation and improve the performance of firms as firms often do notpossess all the knowledge required to innovate. It has brought to the fore, the need to mobilize notonly internal resources, but also external actors. This paper examines some relevant cases fromthe Indian Pharmaceutical sector, which enables us to compare different strategies adoptedacross firms and what drives the selection of strategies.