Structure of Comparative Advantage of China and India： Global and Regional Dynamics

This paper investigates the extent of competition between China and India in the world and ASEAN markets. The analysis is undertaken using the concept of revealed comparative advantage, relative market shares, long‐term trend analysis and statistical tests of convergence. In the context of the ASEAN market the evaluation of competition between India and China has been undertaken with special reference to the prior implementation of the ASEAN‐China Free Trade Area relative to the ASEAN‐India Free Trade Area. The results suggest that threat perceptions at the product level might currently prevail for both economies from each other across all sectors in both markets even though the intensity of the competitive threat varies across products. However, long‐term trend analysis shows that the patterns of comparative advantage of India and China are evolving along divergent paths and, therefore, competition between the two economies might not be a major issue.     

Inequality, Polarisation and Welfare: Theory and Applications

In this paper we explore the possibility of using the Atkinson (1970) – Kolm (1969) – Sen (1973) general ethical index in polarisation measurement. It is shown that though inequality and polarisation are two dissimilar concepts, different indices of inequality may be used to generate alternative indices of polarisation. A numerical illustration based on Indian household expenditure survey data is provided using several polarisation indices.     

Decomposition of inter-regional poverty gap in India: a spatial approach

This paper examines the impact of various socio-economic factors on consumption in rural West Bengal, an eastern state of India, using a regression-based technique reformulated in a spatial framework. The difference of incidences of poverty (head count ratios) in two parts (North and South) of rural West Bengal is then decomposed using the familiar Oaxaca decomposition methodology into an aggregate characteristics effect, which is interpreted as a resource effect and an aggregate coefficients effect, which is interpreted as an efficiency effect. An important observation from the present analysis is that the poorer North Bengal has a scarcity in terms of availability of characteristics (resources) compared to that in South Bengal and the resource scarcity in North Bengal is the dominant factor causing the poverty gap between the two parts of West Bengal. Thus, attention needs to be paid to North Bengal with respect to enhancement of important policy variables like education level, Government aid, and employment opportunities.