India Trade Research Articles

The Influence of Demographic Factors on Commodity Trading in India

The India, being an agro-based economy, has markets for most of the agro-based commodities. India is the largest consumer of gold in the world, which implies a huge market for the yellow metal. India has huge spot markets for all these commodities. For instance, .Indore has a huge market for soya, Ahmedabad for castor seeds and Surendranagar for cotton, etc. Commodity futures trading in India is almost as old as that in the united states with India’s first organized futures market. Bombay Cotton Trade Association, being set up 1875. Futures market in bullion was inevitable and began to emerge in Mumbai in 1920. And there are three major electronic commodity exchanges for the commodity trading in India, they are: National Multi-Commodity Exchange Limited (NMCE), Multi Commodity Exchange of India Limited (MCX) and The National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange Limited (NCDEX). The main purpose of this study is to assess the influence of demographic variables on commodity trading. The commodity market provides trading to trade commodities of varied types.

Rice and wheat straw fodder trading in India: Possible lessons for rice and wheat improvement

Rice and wheat are globally dominant staple cereals and supply a substantial proportion of caloric intake in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs). Straw byproducts from these cereals form the basal diet for ruminant livestock across much of the developing world. Work with other cereals demonstrates the value placed on cereal straws and stovers by smallholder farmers indicated by their willingness to pay a quality premium. Despite this, breeding efforts have tended to disregard straw quality. Little is known about the marketing arrangements and the price dynamics for wheat and rice straws in LMICs. This study aimed to quantify volume and price of wheat and rice straw sales in Patna markets in Northern India. A survey was conducted covering 17 trading locations in Patna and Hajipur in 2008. 24 traders were surveyed with 12 trading only wheat straw, 11 trading only rice straw and 1 trading both straws. A detailed trader characterization survey was implemented to gather information on the history and structure of the business, suppliers, processing arrangements, customers and monthly trading volumes over the previous 12 months. Traders were then visited once per month for 12 months for collection of straw samples and price information. Results showed that traders had developed a series of 5 quality classes for straws based on sensory characteristics. There was reasonable agreement between trader quality class and specific sensory traits, notably “brightness”, “tastiness” and “purity” and quality classes also ranked similarly to prices for straws. Availability of straws of different qualities varied by month although straws of intermediate quality were available during most months and were the most prevalent straws in the markets surveyed. Taken across months, there was a price premium of 7 % in both rice and wheat straw for the “best” quality straw compared with “medium” quality straw. Wheat straw traded for prices around 19 % higher than rice straw on average. This price differential between wheat and rice straw was associated with higher nutritional quality. Within species, differences in nutritive value between straw quality classes were small. There were significant correlations between price and nutritional traits although these mainly related to differences between species rather than differences within species. Extrapolations from comparisons of available straw qualities in multidimensional rice and wheat improvement suggests that the value of traded rice and wheat straws could be increased by more than 60 % by promotion of superior rice and wheat dual purpose cultivars.

Does electronic trading influence stock prices? The Indian experience

ABSTRACT We study the impact of electronic trading in India via two distinct approaches. First, in a more traditional way, we model the data generating process (DGP) of share price index for different trading regimes using an AR-GARCH filter. Our results indicate regime-invariant nature of the DGP. Subsequently, we employ rolling Hinich Bicorrelation test to AR-GARCH-filtered standardized residuals to examine the degree of efficiency of Indian share price index across trading regimes. Our results indicate a distinct improvement in informational efficiency of Indian share price index pursuant to adoption of electronic trading systems.

Trade, Productivity and Employment Nexus: An Examination in Post-Reforms India

In the backdrop of India’s jobless economic growth since the macroeconomic reforms of the 1990’s, this study goes into the inter-relations among growth of productivity, employment and trade. Most of the studies on productivity in Indian manufacturing indicate a surge in the post reforms period though the individual manufacturing groups achieve varying growth. In the recent period, TFP growth in the sector is attributed to technology-based intermediate imports. Changing patterns of trade, especially export composition, have contributed to low employment generation. Growth in productivity and lack of growth in employment are thus explained by changing composition of trade. This paper starts by defining alternative measures of labor productivity growth, namely ‘industry’ labor productivity and ‘system’ labor productivity drawing on World Input-Output Database (WIOD). KLEMS database for India is also used for employment data. The time period for the study is from 1995 to 2014. Trend growth rates are estimated for alternative productivity measures, employment and output. The growth estimates show rapid productivity growth while the rates vary according to the labor intensity in production. It is found that productivity growth, particularly in labor intensive sectors, has been slow. India’s share in world trade has been low and rising slowly. Additionally, the share in world trade of leather and textiles is very small. The composition of trade in India is biased towards the manufacturing sector as a whole while the labor-intensive sectors are neglected. Another emerging pattern of India’s trade is escalating import of intermediate inputs. To establish the nexus between trade and productivity growth, a vertical specialization index has been estimated by using Hummel’s formulation. The estimated result from panel regression with fixed effects establishes positive nexus between vertical specialization and productivity growth. It is argued that India needs to circumvent jobless growth by a balanced approach to job creation and productivity growth. A conscious policy of vertical specialization in products that draw on the country’s vast reserve of un-skilled and semiskilled labor can go a long way in this direction.

The Transformation of the Indo-Tibetan Trade in Wool, 1904–1962

During the first half of the twentieth century, the wool trade articulated new political and economic relationships between Tibet and the British Raj in India and the world beyond. Kalimpong, the Eastern Himalayan town in North Bengal, flourished on the basis of India’s frontier trade with Tibet for about five decades. By placing the trans-frontier wool trade of colonial India at the centre of analysis, this article seeks to highlight the material history that existed on its landed periphery. An attempt will be made to understand the emergence, pattern and significance of India’s trans-frontier trade with Tibet in the light of major geopolitical changes in this region and the world in the twentieth century. The article will argue that the channelling of trade through the Kalimpong–Lhasa route was driven by multiple colonial interests, as well as commercial considerations. In particular, safeguarding the empire and producing a unified sovereign space in the newly established Himalayan frontier constituted a major concern of the British Raj.

Bureaucratic Efficiency as Determinant of Trade Openness in SAARC Countries

The study explores how bureaucratic efficiency effects international trade in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, and Srilanka. A composite indicator of government effectiveness is used to measure bureaucratic efficiency and model is estimated by using the SYS-GMM. It is well recognized that bureaucratic efficiency is vital to the enhancement of trade, whereas the result shows that a negative relationship exists between bureaucratic efficiency and trade openness. Similarly, encouraging link exists between government size and international trade as the government provides different services to enhance the trade at the international market.

India’s Trade with Nigeria: A Competitive Analysis through RCA and RSCA Index

Nigeria attracts the largest trading partnership from India compared to other African countries which India is a leading trade partner. Nigeria having losing its crude oil export destination to the United States, India stood out as the largest destination of Nigerian crude oil. It was estimated that more than 135 corporations are either owned or operated by Indians in Nigeria. The Revealed Comparative Advantage index (RCA) approach has been used to check the competitiveness of India with Nigeria in all commodities and further with Revealed Symmetric Comparative Advantage (RSCA) the competitiveness has been calculated. India is having Comparative Advantage by exporting four commodities viz; Machinery, Pharmaceutical Products (30), Nuclear Reactors, Mechanical Appliances, Boilers; parts thereof (84), Vehicles other than Railway or Tramway Rolling Stock, and parts and accessories thereof (87), articles of Iron or Steel (73), and mainly with Pharmaceutical goods because of the average value of RCA from the period 2000-01 to 2017-18 is 50 and having a higher positive value of RSCA near to 0.9 so the study has analyzed the Bilateral Trade of India and Nigeria, India is having high Comparative advantage over Nigeria in this trade.

Political Life of Lala Lajpat Rai

The fact is that Lala Lajpat Rai joined the Indian National Congress (INC) and participated in many political agitations in Punjab. For his political agitation, he was deported to Burma without trial in 1907 but returned after a few months because of lack of evidence. Moreover, He was opposed to the partition of Bengal and founded the Home Rule League of America in 1917 in New York. He was also elected President of the All India Trade Union Congress and he supported the non-cooperation movement of Gandhi at the Nagpur session of the Congress in 1920. He also protested against the Rowlatt Act and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre that followed. He founded the Servants of People Society in 1921 and he was elected deputy leader of the Central Legislative Assembly in 1926. In 1928, he moved a resolution in the assembly refusing cooperation with the Simon Commission since the Commission had no Indian members. He was leading a silent protest against the Simon Commission in Lahore when he was brutally lathi-charged by Superintendent of Police, James Scott. Rai died of injuries sustained a few weeks later. In this regard most of the scholars agreed that Lala Lajpat Rai’s contribution to Indian National Movement fall in the unique category. The present research paper highlights Lala Lajpat Rai’s political life.

An analysis of Present Position of International Trade of India

International trade plays a vital role in the Indian economy. As the country need to import diverse products so International trade is extremely important to country. India exports vast number of products and also imports an equal amount of other products. Although India has steadily opened up its economy, its tariffs continue to be high when compared with other countries, and its investment norms are still restrictive. This leads some to see India as a ‘rapid globalizer’ while others still see it as a ‘highly protectionist’ economy. Nonetheless, in recent years, the government’s stand on trade and investment policy has displayed a marked shift from protecting ‘producers’ to benefiting ‘consumers’. India is now aggressively pushing for a more liberal global trade regime, especially in services. This paper is an attempt to analyse the major changes in volume, composition and direction of International Trade of India.

The China–India Rivalry in the Globalization Era

The first part of this book has Information about China and India rivalry which begun in 1950 s and deepened with the 1962 border war. This part introduction has introduced by T.V. Paul. At that time several rounds of negotiations were attempted but the result was not positive and so it continued. Recently Doklam issue arose between them. In today’s world of competition in growth and development that rivalry has entered a new phase. Recently it has been reported that China aspires to be the most powerful nation globally and so it is opposing to the growth of trade of India. The first part of this book shows how the relationship between China and India is moving under globalization.

An Analysis on Perspectives of Investors on Commodity Trading and Risk Management in India

Indian commodity market has seen tremendous growth over the past few decades. Investment in capital market attracts higher risk as the return is higher. It becomes very important to understand the perspectives of theinvestors in market in order to minimize the risk faced. This will help them accomplish their goal of achieving higher return by minimizing the risk. The aim of the paper is to provide the risk management perspectives of commodity investors in India. The study concentrates on the aspects like the market and exchange selected for trading, types of risks faced, method of analysis, technique used for managing risk, percentage of the investment, advantages and disadvantages of trading in commodity trading etc. The results can be used by the commodity investors in taking wiser decisions in commodity derivatives investment.Also, hedge their risk accordingly

Volume Limit: An Effective Response to the India Flash Crash?

Abstract This paper assesses the recently enacted securities regulation, called the volume limit, by the Securities and Exchange Board of India. It reviews the literature on the negative consequences of large sale volumes on the stability of the stock market. The paper also examines the recent development of high-frequency trading in India. The two investigations unveil areas in which the regulation is effective and those in which it is inadequate. That is, the effectiveness of the regulation of the volume limit lies in reducing large price impacts due to genuine transactions. However, the inadequacy of this regulation is exposed when manipulation tactics arise regarding order display, such as spoofing by certain high-frequency traders.

Sagarmala: A Beacon of Development in the Maritime Horizon of India

India being one of the fastest growing economies in the world, the vital transport system is under pressure and challenges which are to be addressed on a long time perspective. The Maritime Sector has a greater role to play for the overall economic development of the country. Though Indian Ports handle about 95% of EXIM Trade volume, the proportion of merchandize trade in GDP is only 42%, when Germany’s share is 75% and European Union 70%. With new policy initiatives like Make in India programme, the share of merchandize trade in India’s GDP is set to increase considerably. The major role of India’s transportation system is movement of bulk commodities. The thermal coal alone constitutes about 60% of the freight volume on Indian Railways and 24% of Sea Port freight mix. Coal, POL, iron ore, fertilizers and container constitute 80% of the total export import freight movement across the country. The study aims to highlight the Sagarmala Project with regard to Maritime Horizon in India.

Design of Institutions for Spectrum Governance: Lessons from Spectrum Trading in India

Introduction: Since more than 80% of data usage and Internet access happens over mobiles in emerging economies, effective spectrum regulation is very critical for them. To facilitate spectrum availability, many developing countries are attempting to transition from a command and control mode to a more open approach by adopting instruments such as spectrum auctions, leasing and trading. The institutional environment in emerging economies is in its nascent stage, and is characterized by poor formalization of processes, institutional voids, and inadequate human resource capabilities. In this situation, adoption of new and flexible instruments associated with open regimes often leads to ineffective outcomes and poor spectrum governance (Jain and Dara, 2017; Minervini, 2014). In order to study the constituents for good institutional design, we select a case study of spectrum trading in India. This involved an incumbent operator RCom (seller) and a new disruptive player RJio (buyer). Despite the urgency and necessity for RCom and RJio to remain solvent and plan aggressive growth respectively, the deal did not go through. Not only did RCOM and RJio have to contend with the sectoral regulatory framework (through the Department of Telecommunications, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India), the suo moto cognizance of this transaction by the Competition Commission of India, led to the involvement of various appellate bodies and the Supreme Court causing delays. Subsequently, a modified spectrum regulatory regime emerged. Objectives: Our objective is to develop the framework for an effective institutional design for spectrum regulation, including trading. While there are many studies that cover developed economies (Anker, 2017, Jain and Dara, 2017), these are unable to account for the complexities in developing economies adequately. Our objective is to fill this gap. Methodology: We adopt the single case study approach ( Yin, 2009) exploring the spectrum trade deal between RCom and RJio in the context of spectrum regulation from 1994/95 to 2018. We use detailed available data from secondary sources. We shall adopt the theoretical lens of regulatory spaces, institutional environment, and regulatory capacity. We contextualize our study with examples from spectrum trading in other countries (USA, UK). Expected Outcomes: This paper identifies the underlying constituent elements of a robust institutional design using the lens of regulatory spaces. The paper extends it to an environment characterized by institutional voids, poor design/scope of the regulatory agencies and inadequate mechanism for harnessing dispersed regulatory resources. We show how an appropriate institutional design in the context of developing countries could support the public policy objectives and ensure harmonization between flexibility in instruments and coherence in institutional design, a useful contribution for policy makers.

Foreign aid and growth nexus: Empirical evidence from India and Sri Lanka

This paper examines the relationship between foreign aid and economic growth for India and Sri Lanka using annual time series data from 1960–61 to 2014–15. This study uses various time series techniques such as Johansen–Juselius test, Granger causality test and VAR modelling to find out the short-run and long-run equilibrium dynamics among the variables under consideration. The empirical results confirm that long-run relationship exists among foreign aid inflows, economic growth, trade, inflation, domestic investment and financial development in India. There also exists an uni-directional causality among the variables for the same. However, in Sri Lanka, foreign aid does not have a significant impact on growth, both in the long-run and short-run. The governments of the respective countries are thus required to make efforts in employing proper monetary and fiscal policies in order to stabilize the domestic economic cycle as well as external economic transformation in accordance with the impact of foreign aid on economic growth in each of them.

India & South Asia: Geopolitics, regional trade and economic growth spillovers

ABSTRACTThe South Asian countries formed the regional trade bloc namely South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) with the aim to promote regional economic cooperation through multilateral engagements. India which comes to be the largest economy in the SAARC has posted impressive economic growth in the last decades. As of now India stands major contributor to the exports and imports to/from South Asia, having trade surplus with all other countries from the region. In this backdrop, this paper presents the facts on India’s role in the economic development of South Asia region while testing the potential spillovers of India’s trade and economic growth. We utilize Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound test procedure for short and long run causal relations during the period 1990–2016, hence raising the quality of statistical inference. The results highlight that the economic growth and regional trade of India are found significant short and long run spillovers on the economic growth of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan. The results are highly insightful for policy implication which raises the attention towards the greater degree of trade openness for balanced economic development in the region. India can act as engine of growth, and thus requires to play key role in pushing forward the SAARC objectives through political and diplomatic engagements.

An empirical analysis of India's trade in goods with BRICS

An empirical analysis of India's trade in goods with BRICS

An overview on agarophyte trade in India and need for policy interventions

Generally speaking, various seaweed resources, if properly managed, can be a renewable resource with the ability to be sustainably and commercially exploited on a global basis, according to the species available, for a variety of products of industrial importance. In recent times, agar, derived from certain red seaweeds, is the only phycocolloid to have registered a surge in demand and value. However, little emphasis has been given to this emerging opportunity in India, which to our best judgment has the potential to be a significant commercial success. This review reports on steps taken to ensure Indian self-reliance on the production of agarophytes, their resource availability, management, agar characterization, and various methods of extraction. Historically fluctuating landings have reported the availability of different agarophytes of which maximum biomass of 982 dry t for Gracilaria edulis was harvested during 1990–1991 along with 665 dry t of Gelidiella acerosa during 2002–2003. Meanwhile, data for the industrial production of agar reported ca. 197 t of food-grade agar and ca. 92 t of bacteriological grade agar annually, which is very low in quantity as opposed to domestic requirements. Despite this, farming of agarophyte holds considerable promise. A model is proposed here whereby productivity of 1 t agarophyte per day (TPD) could realize US$827,22–287,440 as net profit. Technical interventions are required in order to improve the growth and yield of commercial open-water farming of agarophytes. During the last two decades, agar imports to India increased ca. 7 times in volume and ca. 42 times in value, while export figures were ca. 198 times and ca. 149 times, respectively. This review examines the existing policies and legislations acting as constrains for the agarophyte trade and products which would provide a framework for improving the overall prospects of agar producing red seaweeds in India.

Women’s Worth: Trade, Female Income, and Fertility in India

AbstractThis paper shows that trade policy can have significant intergenerational distributional effects across gender and social strata. We compare women and births in rural Indian districts diffe...

Afghanistan- India trade linkage: Collaboration and future prospects

Afghanistan- India trade linkage: Collaboration and future prospects