Policy Papers

Policy research on India and South Asia, trade and development, and regional economic integration.

India and South Asia

  • “Industry in the Post-independence Era,” in Chaudhary, Latika, Tirthankar Roy and Anand Swamy, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Modern South Asia, Cambridge University Press, 79-102, March 2026. Publication page
  • “Indian Economy: Performance, Policies, Politics, Prospects and Challenges,” Asia Pacific Economic Policy Review 20(1), 2025, 81-96, January. Publication page
  • “India’s Trade Policy and a Roadmap for Its Liberalization,” India Political Economy Program, Mercatus Center Research Paper, July 22, 2024 Publication page
  • “Why India Should Not Abandon Export-Led Growth in a Post-Pandemic World,” Indian Politics and Policy 4(1), Spring 2024, 77-95 Publication page
  • India at 125: Reclaiming the Lost Glory and Returning the Global Economy to the Old Normal,” 18th C. D. Deshmukh Lecture, Reserve Bank of India, 15th Dec 2023 Publication page
  • “Digital Revolution, Financial Infrastructure and Entrepreneurship: The case of India," Asia and the Global Economy 2(2), July, 2022. Publication page
  • “Towards a Prosperous India.” In Modi@20: Dreams Meet Delivery, BlueKraft Digital Foundation, May 2022, pp. 259-96, New Delhi: Rupa Publications India Pvt Ltd.
  • “The Indian Economy at 75,” The Round Table, 111(3), 275-290, 2022. Publication page
  • “India’s Trade Policy: Past, Present and Future,” 36th Exim Bank Commencement Day Annual Lecture, March 19, 2021, India Exim Bank, World Trade Center Complex, Cuffe Parade, Mumbai - 400 005, India. Publication page
  • “Decline in Poverty in India: Real or an Artifact of a Low Poverty Line?” Indian Public Policy Review 2(2), March-April 2021, 19-27 (with Vishal More). Publication page
  • “The Long Road to Recovery,” India Today, January 9, 2021.
  • “India: Accelerating Growth, Creating Well-paid Jobs for the Masses,” Indian Public Policy Review 1(1), September-October 2020, 13-24. Publication page
  • “How to Distance from China,” India Today, July 18, 2020.
  • “India is Trump’s Next target in the Trade War,” Foreign Policy, March 13, 2019. Publication page
  • “Modinomics at Four,” Foreign Affairs, June 22, 2018. Publication page
  • “India: Three and a Half Years of Modinomics,” Working Paper 2018-1, Deepak and Neera Raj Center on Indian Economic Policies, Columbia University. Publication page
  • “Launching India into a Double-digit Growth Orbit,” Seminar (Annual), January 2015, #665, 45-50.
  • “Time to change course: No magic bullet that can cure the ills of Indian education system,” India Today, 1 August 2014
  • “Fixing the economy: What all PM Modi needs to do to fix the economy,” India Today, 26 June 2014 (Cover Story).
  • “The Promise of Modinomics: How the New Prime Minister can Bring Back Growth,” Foreign Affairs < , accessed 18 March 2015. Publication page
  • “A Reform Agenda for India’s New Government,” C. D. Deshmukh Memorial Lecture 2014, 11 February 2014, National Council on Applied Economic Research, New Delhi.
  • “Indian Economy: Retrospect and Prospect,” Richard Snape Memorial Lecture 2013, 6 November 2013, Productivity Commission, Australian Government, Melbourne.
  • “Introduction” (with Jagdish Bhagwati), in Bhagwati, Jagdish and Arvind Panagariya, ed., Reforms and Economic Transformation in India, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 1-12. Publication page
  • “Introduction” (with Jagdish Bhagwati,) in Bhagwati, Jagdish and Arvind Panagariya, ed., India's Reforms: How they Produced Inclusive Growth, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 3-17. Publication page
  • “External liberalization by India and China: recent experience and future challenges” (with Asha Sundaram), India Growth and Development Review 6(1). Publication page
  • “India and China: Trade and Foreign Investment.” In N. Hope, A. Kochar, R. Noll and T. N. Srinivasan, ed., 2013, Economic Reform in India, Cambridge university Press, pp. 96-138.
  • “Avoiding Lopsided Spatial Transformation,” in Ejaz Ghani, ed., Reshaping Tomorrow: Is South Asia ready for the Big Leap? New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 143-167.
  • “India’s unfinished Business,” Foreign Policy, November 4, 2010.
  • “Understanding the crisis and its aftermath,” Economic and Political Weekly, February 26, 2011, pp. 33-35.
  • “India: A Global Economic Power?” 2011, Journal of International Affairs, Spring-Summer, Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 197-212.
  • “The Global Professional: Demographic Change and the Rise of India,” 2011, Harvard International Review Winter, Vol. XXXII, No. 4, pp. 40-45.
  • “India on the growth Turnpike: No State Left behind,” Chapter 1 in Kochhar, Sameer, ed., India on the Growth Turnpike, March 2010. Publication page
  • “Building a Modern India,” in India 2010, New Delhi: Business Standard, 2010, pp. 3-14.
  • “Reorienting India’s Public Sector.” In Bibek Debroy, ed., The Crossover: Public Sector in Globalized India, 2008.
  • “The Indian Growth Miracle: What are the Lessons?” ASCI Journal of Management 38(1), 70-85.
  • ‘External Liberalization by India and China: Recent Experience and Future Challenges,’ presented at Macroeconomy Research Conference of the Tokyo Club Foundation for Global Studies, December 6-7, 2006. Publication page
  • ‘The Political Economy of Trade and Foreign Investment Policies in India: 1950-2006,’ paper presented at the conference ‘Applied Economic Research in Independent India: The Way Forward’, National Council on Applied Economic Research, December 17, 2006. To be published in a volume edited by Suman Bery, Surjit Bhalla and Rakesh Mohan.
  • ‘Transforming India’, in Jagdish Bhagwati and Charles Calomiris, eds., Sustaining India’s Growth Miracle, New York: Columbia University Press, April 2008., pp. 9-45.
  • ‘India and China: Trade and Foreign Investment’, paper presented at the conference ‘Challenges of Economic Policy Reform in Asia’, Stanford Center for International Development, June 1-3, 2006. To be published in a volume edited by T. N. Srinivasan.
  • “India and the WTO,” in Kaushik Basu, ed., The Oxford Companion to Economics in India, 562-5, 2007.
  • “Why India lags behind China and how it can Bridge the Gap,” World Economy 30 (2), 229–248, February 2007. Publication page
  • Bringing Competition to the Top Civil Service,” Yojana (published in 13 Indian languages simultaneously), August 2005.
  • “Vote Against Reforms?” Economic and Political Weekly, May 22, 2004.
  • “Growth and reforms during 1980s and 1990s,” Economic and Political Weekly, June 19, 2004, 2581-94
  • “India: Are the Skeptics Right?” IMF Survey 32, number 21, December 1, 2003.
  • “Is a Crisis Around the Corner?” (Comment on “A Balance Sheet Crisis in India,” by Nouriel Roubini and Richard Hemming) in Peter S. Heller and Govinda Rao, A Sustainable Fiscal Policy for India: An International Perspective. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2006.
  • “India in the 1980s and 1990s: A Triumph of Reforms”, IMF Working Paper WP/04/43. In Tseng, W. and D. Cowen, eds., India's and China's Recent Experience with Reform and Growth, Palgrave-Macmillan, London, 170-200.
  • “South Asia: Does Preferential Trade Liberalization Make Sense?” World Economy, 2003, Volume 26, no. 9 (special issue on Global Trade Policy), pp. 1279-1291. Publication page
  • “India at Doha: Retrospect and Prospect,” Economic and Political Weekly 37(4), January 26, 2002, 279-284.
  • "Trade Liberalization in Asia," in Jagdish Bhagwati, ed., Going Alone: The case for Relaxed Reciprocity in Freeing Trade, Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 2002, 219-301. Publication page
  • “India’s Economic Reforms: What has been accomplished? What remains to be done?” EDRC Policy Brief 2, November 2001, Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines
  • “The Millennium Budget: Behind Its Time?,” Economic and Political Weekly, March 4-10, 2000, 755-758.
  • “WTO Trade Policy Review of India, 1998,” World Economy, August 1999, 799-824. Publication page
  • “Trade Policy in South Asia: Recent Liberalization and Future Agenda,” World Economy 22(3), May 1999, 353-378. Publication page
  • "What Can We Learn from China's Export Strategy?" Finance and Development, June 1995. Publication page
  • "India: A New Tiger on the Block?" Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 48, No. 1, Summer 1994, pp. 193-221
  • "The Caste System and Economic Development," Rajasthan Economic Journal, July 1981, 1-15.

Trade and Development

  • Debunking Protectionist Myths: Free Trade, the Developing World and Prosperity,” Economic Development Bulletin, No. 31, July 18 2019, Cato Institute
  • “The Trade War has Claimed its First Victim,” Foreign Policy, October 19, 2018. Publication page
  • Challenges to the Multilateral Trading System and Possible Responses. Economics: The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, Vol. 7, 2013-10, pp. 1-25.
  • “Trade Openness and Growth Miracles: A Fresh Look at Taiwan,” chapter 17 in Ken Heydon and Steve Woolcock, ed., Ashgate Research Companion to International Trade Policy, U.K.: Ashgate, July 2012. Publication page
  • “Outsourcing: Is the Third Industrial Revolution Really Around the Corner?” Paper presented at Macro research Foundation Conference 2007, Tokyo Club Foundation for Research Studies, Tokyo, November 13-14, 2007.
  • “Trade and Labor: A Trade Economist’s View,” Integration and Trade Journal, July-December, 2006, No. 25, 261-279.
  • “Liberalizing Agriculture.” Foreign Affairs, December 2005, 56-66.
  • “The Protection Racket,” Foreign Policy September/October 2005, 94-95.
  • “A Passage to Prosperity,” Far Eastern Economic Review, July/August, 2005.
  • “Agricultural Liberalization and the Least Developed Countries: Six Fallacies,” World Economy 28, No. 9, (Special issue on Global Trade Policy) September 2005, 1277-1299. Publication page
  • “Miracles and Debacles: In Defense of Trade Openness,” World Economy 27, No 8, (special issue on Global Trade Policy), August 2004, 1149-71.
  • “The Millennium Round and developing Countries: Negotiating Strategies and Areas of Benefits,” September 1999, UNCTAD and Center for International Development, G-24 Discussion Papers Series, No. 1, March 2000. Publication page
  • “Think Again: International Trade,” Foreign Policy, November-December 2003, 20-28.
  • “Equality versus Poverty,” Tech Central Station (an interview by Radley Balko), August 4, 2003.
  • “Trade Liberalization and Food Security: Conceptual Links.” in Trade Reforms and Food Security, 2003, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome Chapter 3, 25-42.
  • “Wanted: Jubilee 2010. Dismantling Protection” (with Jagdish Bhagwati), OECD Observer, No. 231/232, May 2002, 27-29.
  • “Labor Standards and Trade Sanctions: Right End Wrong Means,” in Devashish Mitra and Rana Hasan, eds., The Impact of Trade on Labor: Issues, Perspectives, and Experiences from Developing Asia, 2003, North Holland, 141-157.
  • “Evaluating the Case for Export Subsidies,” Policy Research Working Paper 2276, World Bank, January 2000]. Publication page
  • “Developing Countries at Doha: A Political Economy Analysis,” World Economy: Global Trade Policy: 2002 (special issue, by invitation only) 25, No. 9, 1205-33. Publication page
  • “Trade-Labor Link: A Post-Seattle Analysis,” in Drabek, Zdenek, Globalization under Threat, Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 2001,101-123. Publication page
  • “E-Commerce, WTO and Developing Countries,” World Economy 23, No. 8, August 2000, 959-978. Also in Kariyawasam, Rohan, ed., The WTO, Communications, E-commerce and the Internet, 2009, London: Edward Elgar. Publication page
  • “Free Trade at the Border,” in Bhagwati, J., ed., The Next Negotiating Round: Examining the Agenda for Seattle, Proceedings of the Conference Held at Columbia University, July 23-24, 1999, 209-223, chapter 20.
  • “TRIPs and the WTO: An Uneasy Marriage,” in Bhagwati, J., ed., The Next Negotiating Round: Examining the Agenda for Seattle, Proceedings of the Conference Held at Columbia University, July 23-24, 1999, 91-102, chapter 11. Also in Keith Maskus, The WTO, Intellectual Property Rights and the Knowledge Economy, 2004, London: Edward Elgar, chapter 2.
  • “Introduction,” (with M.G. Quibria and N. Rao) in Arvind Panagariya, Muhamed Quibria and Narhari Rao), eds., The Global Trading System and Developing Asia, December, 1997, 3-44.
  • "The Theory and Practice of Trade Reform: A Public Economics Perspective," (with Shanta Devarajan) in Guillermo Perry, John Whalley and Gary McMohan, eds., Fiscal Reform and Structural Change in Developing Countries, Volume 2, New York: St. Martin’s Press and International Development Research Center, 2000.
  • "Optimum and Revenue Maximizing Trade Taxes in a Multicountry Framework: Theory and Application to Cocoa," (with Maurice Schiff), Revista de Analisis Economico, June 1995.
  • “Introduction," in "A Symposium on the Economics of Uniform Tariffs," Economic Studies Quarterly, September 1994.
  • "Unraveling the Mysteries of China's Foreign Trade Regime," World Economy, January 1993, 51-68. Publication page
  • "Taxes versus Quotas: The Case of Cocoa Exports," (with Maurice Schiff), in Goldin, I. and Winters, A., Open Economies: Structural Adjustment and Agriculture, Cambridge University Press, 1992. Publication page
  • "Commodity Exports and Real Income in Africa: A Preliminary Analysis," (with Maurice Schiff) in Chhibber, A. and Fischer, S., eds., Economic Reform in Sub- Saharan Africa, The World Bank, 1991, Published in Spanish under the title "Politica Comercial Exportaciones de Productos Basicos y Bienestar: Teoria y Aplicacion al Cocoa" in Cuadernos de Economia 28, 249-269, August 1991.

Regionalism

  • “Why Northeast and Southeast Asia Must Deepen Their Engagement with India,” Asia and the Global Economy, Vol 2(1), January 2022, pp. 1-7. Publication page
  • “EU Preferential Trade Arrangements and Developing Countries,” World Economy 25, No. 10, November 2002, 1415-32. Publication page
  • “Discussion of ‘Is APEC a Building Block or Stumbling Block Towards Trade Liberalization’ by Masahiro Endoh” in Robert M. Stern, ed., Issues and Options for U.S.-Japan Trade Policies, University of Michigan Press, 2002, 303-305.
  • “Discussion of ‘Regulatory Protectionism, Developing Nations and a Two-tier World Trading System’ by Richard Baldwin,” in Collins, Susan and Dani Rodrik, eds., Brookings Forum 2000, Bookings Institution, 2001, 285-289.
  • “The Regionalism Debate: An Overview,” World Economy, June 1999, 477-511. Publication page
  • “An Empirical Estimate of Static Welfare Losses to Mexico from NAFTA," in Panagariya, Arvind, ed., Regionalism in Trade Policy: Essays in Preferential Trading, Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co, September 1999, 215-224.
  • “Preferential Trading and Developing Asia,” in Teunissen, J.J., Regional Integration and Multilateral Cooperation in the Global Economy, May 1998, The Hague: FONDAD, 77-92.
  • "The New Regionalism: A Benign or Malign Growth," (with T.N. Srinivasan) in Bhagwati, J. and Hirsch, M., eds., The Uruguay Round and Beyond. Essays in Honor of Arthur Dunkel, Springer-Verlag, May 1998, 221-240. Publication page
  • "APEC and the United States," in Woodland, Alan and John Piggott, eds. International Trade Policy and the Pacific Rim, U.K.: Macmillan Press, 1998, ch. 14, 302-318. Publication page
  • "L'integration Regionale Hier et Aujourd'hui," (with Jaime de Melo and Claudio Montenegro) Revue Economique du Developpement, February 1993, pp. 7-49. In English, "Regional Integration, Old and New," WPS #985, World Bank. Publication page
  • "Introduction," (with Jaime de Melo) in New Dimensions in Regional Integration, pp. 159-193, 1993. Publication page
  • "The New Regionalism: A Country Perspective," (with Jaime de Melo and Dani Rodrik) in Jaime de Melo and Arvind Panagariya, ed., New Dimensions in Regional Integration, pp. 159-193, 1993. Also CEPR Discussion Paper #517 and World Bank working paper WPS #1094. Publication page
  • "The New Regionalism," (with Jaime de Melo) Finance and Development, December 1992, 37-40. Publication page
  • "Rethinking the New Regionalism," in John Nash and Wendy Takacs, eds., Trade Policy Reform. Lessons and Implications, Washington, D.C.:World Bank, 1998, 87-145.
  • "Is East Asia Less Open than North America and the European Community? No." (with Sumana Dhar) in Woodland, Alan and John Piggott, eds. International Trade Policy and the Pacific Rim, U.K.: Macmillan Press, 1998, ch. 5, 105-123. Publication page
  • "Should East Asia Go Regional?" in Lee, Hiro and Roland-Holst, David, Economic Development and Cooperation in the Pacific Basin, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998, ch. 4, 119-154. Publication page
  • "East Asia: A New Trading Bloc?" Finance and Development, March 1994, 16-19. Publication page
  • "East Asia and the New Regionalism in World Trade," World Economy, November 1994, 817-839. Reproduced in Milner, Chris, Developing and Newly Industrializing Countries, Volume I, Chelentham, U.K.: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, ch. 15, 341-363. Publication page
  • "The Free Trade Area of the Americas: Good for Latin America?," World Economy 19(5), September 1996, 485-515. Reproduced in Milner, Chris, Developing and Newly Industrializing Countries, Volume I, Chelentham, U.K.: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, ch. 17, 375-405. Publication page
  • "Preferential Trading Areas and Multilateralism: Strangers, Friends or Foes?" (with J. Bhagwati), in Bhagwati, J. and Panagariya, A., The Economics of Preferential Trading, Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 1996, 1-78. Reproduced as chapter 2 in Bhagwati, J., P. Krishna and Arvind Panagariya, eds., Trading Blocs: Alternative Approaches to Analyzing Preferential Trade Agreements, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, February 1999. Publication page