Does trade interdependency lead linkages between stock markets? A case of South Asian countries

Purpose The paper presents the facts on the policy challenges and opportunities in the way forward of trade and economic co-operation in South Asia amid the coronavirus disease 2019, which comes to be the least economically integrated region worldwide. Due to tense geopolitics in South Asia, trade is heavily biased toward extra-regional markets despite of existing regional trade agreements (TAs) in the region.Design/methodology/approach Having tested the stationarity of data with structural break, the paper uses intra-regional trade in addition to other domestic economic variables as exogenous regressors in autoregressive distributed lag multivariate framework, hence raising the quality of statistical inference.Findings This paper highlights that intra-regional trade significantly affects the economic welfare as measured by Gross Domestic Product per capita of the people from the region, hence raising the need for higher regional trade openness. If trade barriers are overcome, all the South Asian countries will gain through effective implementation of regional TAs.Research limitations/implications The study relies on the multivariate technique with regional trade share as the main exogenous variable. In addition, the regulatory and economic conditions of all countries are different which also tends to affect the mutual degree of trade relations.Practical implications Over the economic reasons, the manmade barriers owing to political differences are the root cause for the low intra-regional trade. Amid the pandemic, South Asian courtiers have the high time to leverage the bilateral trade for mutual benefits. India being the largest economy can play a decisive role in pushing forward the regional trade bloc – South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) – for achieving its objective through multilateral engagements in a wider perspective.Originality/value The present study makes pioneer efforts to examine the dynamic linkages between regional trade and economic growth. The results provide new insight into the dynamics of benefits driven by trade interdependency.

"In 1995 the seven South Asian countries--Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka--initiated a multilateral framework for regionwide integration under the South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement (SAPTA). In a recent initiative, members agreed that SAPTA would begin the transformation into a South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) by the beginning of 2006, with full implementation completed between 2009 and 2013. The impetus toward regional preferential trading arrangements and greater regional economic integration raises many important issues, both for the South Asian region as a whole and for the individual countries. Pitigala uses the "natural trading partners" hypothesis as the empirical criterion to assess the potential success of a South Asian trading bloc.

In 1995 the seven South Asian countries - Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka - initiated a multilateral framework for regionwide integration under the South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement (SAPTA). In a recent initiative, members agreed that SAPTA would begin the transformation into a South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) by the beginning of 2006, with full implementation completed between 2009 and 2013. The impetus toward regional preferential trading arrangements and greater regional economic integration raises many important issues, both for the South Asian region as a whole and for the individual countries. Pitigala uses the trading partners hypothesis as the empirical criterion to assess the potential success of a South Asian trading bloc. Using various definitions of the natural trading partner hypothesis - based on trade volume, geographic proximity, and the complementarity approaches - the author demonstrates that the South Asian countries can be characterized only moderately as natural trading partners. This characterization is, however, largely a consequence of previous impediments to trade among regional members. The author further demonstrates through additional statistical measures - including revealed comparative advantage indices, trade concentration, and trade competition profiles - that the trade structures that have evolved among the South Asian Countries may not facilitate a rapid increase in intra-regional trade. But there is evidence that previous unilateral trade liberalization efforts in the South Asian countries have already had a positive impact in boosting both intra- and extra-regional trade. Continuing the process of unilateral liberalization, in parallel with regional integration, would aid the South Asian countries to continue to diversify their still narrow export bases and potentially evolve new comparative advantages and complementarities that could facilitate the successful implementation of SAFTA. This paper - a product of the Trade Team, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to analyze regional integration and trade policies.

Like many developing economies, the South Asian countries are opening-up their economies with a view to accelerating their economic growth through greater trade and investment. In this context, attempts have also been made to encourage regional trade under the aegis of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). In particular, the South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement (SAPTA) provides for reductions in tariffs and other restrictions on specific commodities on a reciprocal basis, and the eventual objective is to integrate the South Asian economies into a free trade area through SAFTA, which would come into force on January 1, 2006. However, despite greater attention on regional economic cooperation initiatives, there has been little progress in regional trade expansion: intra-regional trade continues to be minimal, not exceeding 5 percent of the total trade of the South Asian economies. This paper highlights the importance of regional economic integration in South Asia as elsewhere, spells out the factors which have so far hampered economic cooperation in the region, and outlines a future course of action to achieve greater economic integration in South Asia. Section 2 provides a broad perspective on regional economic integration with a particular focus on the need to foster greater economic cooperation in South Asia. Section 3 discusses the factors that have impeded intra-regional trade and economic ties within the region. Section 4 spells out measures to enhance economic cooperation in the SAARC region, while Section 5 concludes the discussion.

South Asia is considered as the least integrated region in the world despite many attempts made to liberalize movement of goods and services within the region. Intra-regional total trade and agricultural trade among South Asian countries are about 4% and 8% respectively. The objectives of this study are to document the extent of intra-regional trade of South Asia using trade intensities and to evaluate the determinants of the same using gravity models. Three equations were estimated taking exporter GDP, importer GDP, exporter population, importer population, distance, WTO membership, regional and bilateral trade agreements, common language, common colony and diversification index as the independent variables for the year 2010. The first model used total-trade intensities as the dependent variable and covered 2490 country pairs. The second and third models were sub-samples covering total trade and agricultural trade respectively in South Asia. The results show that higher agriculture trade exchanges exist between Pakistan-Afghanistan and Nepal- Bhutan. Total trade intensities are higher for Afghanistan-Pakistan and Afghanistan-India. The estimation results of gravity models indicate that exporter GDP, importer population, distance and colonial ties are significant determinants of trade intensity in all three models. Even though WTO membership and regional trade agreements are key determinants of both world and South Asian total trade, they do not significantly influence agriculture trade. Bilateral trade agreements have strong influence in strengthening trade relationships in agriculture trade intensities in South Asian region. Export market diversification is a key determinant of trade intensities. <br /> Sri Lankan Journal of Agricultural Economics Vol.(14-15)No. 1 (2012-2013) pp. 59-81

s PLoS Medicine, Daniel Reidpath and Kit Yee Chan challenge the widely cited link between HIV-related stigma and the spread of the epidemic [1].This is an important question, given the heavy emphasis on stigma in policies of the World Health Organization, the Joint United Programme on HIV/AIDS, and other public health institutions, but in making their argument Reidpath and Chan misrepresent the connections that other authors have made between stigma and viral transmission, ignore evidence that does suggest an association, and propose a model of their own for which they offer no evidence.HIV infection establishes itself fi rst in certain high-risk groups-men who have sex with men, intravenous drug users, sex workers, mobile populations-and only later moves into the general population.In the early stages of the epidemic, stigma facilitates transmission within high-risk groups, because these already marginalized groups receive little attention from policy makers and the health-care community and are further discriminated against when they are identifi ed with HIV and AIDS [2].Stigma also prevents or makes it more diffi cult for members of high-risk groups to access preventive services, including HIV antibody testing [3].Reidpath and Chan distort this dynamic by describing a model in which stigma leads to fear which leads to unsafe behavior.We know of no one who suggests that stigma causes sex between men or intravenous drug use.Instead, there is evidence that HIV-related stigma makes it diffi cult for people to take actions to reduce their risks; for example, by accessing HIV education [4], exchanging needles [5], and negotiating condom use [6].Stigma may even lead women who know they are HIV positive to breast-feed their infants rather than arouse suspicion of their serostatus through formula feeding [7].This undoubtedly increases the risk of vertical viral transmission.Reidpath and Chan go on to propose that stigma may actually "slow the spread of infection from those [highrisk] groups to the general population."Although there is a plausible logic to this suggestion, there is no evidence for it.Even if stigma does reduce the opportunities that marginalized groups have to transmit HIV to the broader population, this would have little effect on the dynamics of a generalized epidemic.While they recognize that stigma presents a barrier to the treatment and care of people living with HIV, Reidpath and Chan fail to recognize the association this may have with increased transmission.HIV-related stigma discourages people from disclosing their status, entering care, and adhering to antiretroviral regimens, all of which represent missed opportunities for prevention.Around the world HIV capitalizes on and reinforces social stigma and discrimination, especially the low status of women.Defeating the epidemic requires an honest examination of all these phenomena and interventions that target both the virus itself and its widespread social impacts.

Introduction: Dentistry is the field that brings back one’s smile. It is this field that teaches about the importance of oral hygiene. Dental education varies in all Southeast Asian and South Asian countries. Aim: To compare dental education concerning fee structure, dentist population ratio, and year of graduation between South Asian and Southeast Asian countries. Methodology: This study was conducted to the comparison of dental education in South Asian and Southeast Asian countries. Southeast Asian countries were classified as Group A and South Asian countries were classified as Group B. Data was retrieved from manual and electronic databases using search engines (Pubmed, google scholar, Web of Science). In this study, the keywords were Dentistry, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Dental colleges, and Dentist population ratio used in the search. Result: This study determined the difference between dental education, dentist population ratio, and the dentist’s average salary among Group A and B. The number of Dental colleges was the maximum in India (71%) among all other Group A and B. Conclusion: Nevertheless South Asia had a plethora of colleges, and high-paying dental jobs were possible only in Southeast Asian countries. Hence substantial numbers of dental colleges with proper apportionment and job contentment is obligatory for better treatment outcome of patients.

During the past two decades, intraregional trade has assumed a lot of importance – with intraregional trade growing rapidly in several regions, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the European Union. However, intraregional trade in South Asia has not witnessed rapid expansion despite the institutional measures taken by the South Asian countries through the South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement (SAPTA) and the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA).

South and South-East Asian countries report a great liability for the world's road traffic injuries (RTIs) and deaths. A vast number of research studies tested various interventions including specific protective devices to prevent accidents, but no review papers have been conducted to find out the prevalence of RTIs in South-East and South Asian countries. This review paper was an attempt to find out the prevalence of RTIs and their associated factors in South-East and South Asian countries. Following the guidelines of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), we searched the articles in the electronic databases of PubMed/Medline, Scopus, CINAHL, ProQuest, and Web of Science. Articles were selected if they reported the prevalence of RTI, or road traffic accident (RTA) deaths. In addition, a data quality assessment was done. Out of the 10,818 article hits from the literature search, ten articles found the eligibility and inclusion criteria. Most of the studies reported that males are involved in the RTIs more than females. The male mortality rate is more than the female mortality in RTI mortality. Young adult males are the major victims when compared with the different age groups of male victims. Two-wheelers are the major contributors to the accident rate. Religious or national festivals are not free from accident-prone times. Climatic seasons and nighttime have a major influence on the RTIs. RTIs are increasing due to the sudden and huge increase in the number of motor vehicles and the development of cities and towns. Accidents are non-predictable but controllable disasters in society. Overspeeding, bad conditions on road, the vulnerability of the vehicles, and careless driving are the major reported reasons for RTIs. Making and implementing strict laws can help us to control RTAs. The major effect on the reduction of RTI can be assured only with the presence of responsible people. That can be achieved only by creating awareness in society about traffic rules and responsibilities.

Background Menopausal symptoms can have a significant impact on a woman's quality of life. Information on availability of menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) in National Essential Medicines Lists (NEMLs) of South Asian (SA) countries has not been widely studied. Objective To review the availability of non-injectable MHT included in NEMLs of SA countries and to assess differences in availability compared to the recommended MHT preparations in the World Health Organization (WHO) model essential medicines list and the list of MHT available to women of a developed country in the Asia Pacific Region, while comparing with the healthcare expenditure and country's economic status. Methods Most recent NEMLs were obtained from all eight SA counties by visiting the Ministry of health/regulatory website of the respective country. Latest WHO model essential medicines list and Pharmaceuticals Benefits Scheme (PBS) schedule from Australia were obtained from the WHO and PBS websites respectively. Per capita health expenditure was obtained from The WHO Global Health Expenditure Database. Two investigators extracted the non-injectable MHT preparations independently from NEMLs and conducted the comparison. Results Except in two countries, in all other SA coun­tries NEMLs were updated within the preceding five years. According to available data, seven SA countries had at least one separate preparation of oestrogen suitable for MHT while all countries had a separate progesterone preparation suitable for MHT. The oestrogen preparations available in the SA NEMLs were limited to either ethinyl estradiol or conjugated oestrogen tablets whilst in the WHO model, oestrogen preparations were not specified. In Australia, estradiol tablets were the only available oral oestrogen while there were four more different dosage forms of oestrogens available through the PBS Scheme. Progesterone preparations found in SA countries, WHO list and PBS schedule were similar, but oestrogen progesterone combination MHT preparations were only available in the PBS schedule. Per capita health expenditure was much higher in Australia compared to SA countries where a wide variation was observed. Conclusions The available evidence suggests that a larger population of SA women have access only to a very limited number of options if in need of MHT. In contrast, importance of MHT is highlighted in PBS Schedule. Although per capita health expenditure was low in SA countries, given that MHT products are relatively low cost and that there is a large proportion of women in menopausal age in this region, it would be imperative to update the WHO model list and NEMLs of SA countries to address the growing need of safe MHT and to improve the quality of life of postlnenopausal women in our region.

The aim of this research is to examine the effect of intra- regional trade in ASEAN, extra regional ASEAN, foreign direct investment, inflation and population to the economic growth of ASEAN member countries. The method of analysis which is used in the research is regression panel with Eviews software 7. The population which is used in this research is ten ASEAN member countries with study period from year 2010 till year 2014. The result showed that, intra- regional trade in ASEAN, extra regional ASEAN, foreign direct investment, inflation and total population simultaneously has a significant effect on the economic growth of ASEAN member countries. Partially, intra-regional ASEAN trade and the number of population have negative effect on the economic growth of ASEAN member countries. While intra- regional trade, foreign direct investment and inflation partially have positive effect on the economic growth on ASEAN member countries.

Regionalism in South Asia, through formation of regional and bilateral trading agreements, dates back to mid 1990s. The objective of this study is to assess the effects of various forms of trade agreements on bi-lateral trade of South Asia. Gravity model of international trade was used as the analytical tool and the effects of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Regional Trade Agreements (RTA) such as SAFTA, EU, ASEAN, BIMSTEC and NAFTA, and Bilateral Trade Agreements (BTA) were estimated. Three types of BTAs were included; between two South Asian countries, between a South Asian country and a country not in the region, and between two non-South Asian countries. Distance between the trading partners, sharing of common language, and colonial ties were the remaining explanatory variables included in the models. Cross sectional data covering 2555 bilateral trade for the year 2012 were used for the estimation and the data were extracted from the gravity databases of the Asia Pacific Research and Training Network, the World Bank and the WTO. The models were estimated using Ordinary Least Squares including importer and exporter fixed effects. The results of the estimation suggest that sharing of a common language, sharing a common colony, and membership of WTO positively and significantly affect export values and the effect of geographical distance, as expected, on the same has a negative effect. The memberships in BTA and RTA have mixed effects. Among RTAs used in the study, only the co-efficient for EU is statistically significant. SAFTA, ASEAN, BIMSTEC and NAFTA do not show significant effects on bilateral trade. The effects of all BTAs are positive and significant and they indicate that BTAs within South Asia enhance its regional trade greater than the BTAs with non-members. These results suggest that proliferation of BTAs within South Asia helped in expanding regional trade. Tropical Agricultural Research Vol. 26 (3): 468 – 485 (2015)

This paper attempts to examine the relationship between financial development, rural–urban income inequality and poverty reduction in south Asian economies by using panel data from 1990 to 2013. The stationary properties of the variables are checked by LLC and IPS panel unit root tests. Pedroni’s panel co-integration test is used to examine the long run relationship and panel dynamic ordinary least squares (PDOLS) is employed to estimate the coefficients of co-integrating equation. The short term and long run causality is examined by panel Granger causality. Evidence confirms the existence of long-run equilibrium relationship among the variables. The results of PDOLS indicate that financial development and economic growth reduces poverty in south Asian countries, whereas rural–urban income inequality aggravates poverty. The empirical findings of panel Granger causality indicate the presence of short-run causality running from rural–urban income inequality and financial development to poverty reduction variable and from economic growth to inequality. The study recommends that policies geared towards increasing financial development and economic growth should be adopted in order to reduce the high level of poverty currently prevailing in south Asian economies.

Economic and financial theories postulate that stocks should provide a hedge against expected inflation. Since the work of Fisher (1930), there has been on-going empirical investigation into testing the relationships between stock price indices and consumer price indices, in levels and first differences. The findings of these investigations are mixed. One concern is that the methodological issues associated with these studies are not adequately addressed in the literature. The main contribution of this thesis is to identify and improve upon the weaknesses of some of the methodologies employed for testing this relationship and apply the improved methods to Australian data. This thesis conducts investigation into the short run and long run relationships between Australian stock and consumer price indices, in levels and first differences, using bivariate and multivariate frameworks. In addition, this thesis examines, whether or not, the major monetary policy change introduced by the Reserve Bank of Australia in January 1990, has had any significant influence on these relationships. During the period leading up to this change, Australia experienced a high inflationary environment. Using the quarterly data for the period 1969 to 2008 and employing vector autoregression (VAR), autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models and bootstrap methods, this thesis presents robust statistical inference on the relationships between stock and consumer price indices. A review of the literature suggests that previous empirical studies investigating this relationship paid inadequate attention to improving the statistical inference on the long run parameters. This thesis makes two major improvements to the methodologies used by previous empirical studies: one is the construction of bootstrap confidence intervals for VAR impulse responses. The other is the estimation of the long run model parameters that are nonlinear functions of those of ARDL models by employing bootstrap methods. Traditionally, OLS and delta methods are used to estimate these long run parameters, although the latter method is known to work well only with large samples under normality. Such strong requirements do not appear to be satisfied for the empirical models studied in the thesis. Here, a bias-corrected bootstrap method for estimating long run model parameters and their confidence intervals is adopted when the normality assumption is violated, and the wild bootstrap method is adopted when both normality and homoscedasticity assumptions are violated. Based on the VAR impulse response functions and bootstrap confidence intervals, this thesis finds that there is a short run negative relationship between stock returns and inflation. The long run ARDL model estimates indicate that the real stock returns are independent of expected inflation, suggesting that Australian stocks constitute a good hedge against expected inflation. Furthermore, the empirical results indicate that the relationship between stock returns and inflation is not affected by the major monetary policy change introduced in January 1990. No evidence of a long run relation between real stock prices and consumer prices was found for the more recent low inflationary period. Based on the empirical evidence presented in the thesis, the overall conclusion is that Australian stocks provide a hedge against inflation, from which domestic and foreign investors can benefit.

South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) was founded to achieve better standards of living through greater development in South Asia. SAARC has moved nearer in even though many of its member countries failed to realize the benefit of developing intra-regional trade. Despite the formation of a South Asian Free Trading Area (SAFTA) intra-regional trade performance is not satisfactory relative to South Asia’s total trade flow. The main objective of this study is to identify the impediments to boost the intra- to a status of a borderless market regional trade flow of South Asian Region. The study selected the qualitative research methodology where twenty in-depth face to face interviews were carried out with both local as well as regional stakeholders who engage in South Asian regional trade activities. Template analysis was used as the method of data analysis. Secondary data sources used to triangulate the interview data. The research identified four (4) major impediments as the Regional market structure, Regional social structure, Political and economic structure, and Tariff structure. Implications and recommendation developed as it was identified the attractiveness of niche markets, the suitability of localizing marketing strategies, the advantage of entering into strategic alliances between regional and outside companies, and suitability of developing a regional supply chain network and a regional brand name.