Gains and Losses of India-China Trade Cooperation – a Gravity Model Impact Analysis

As revealed by the trade intensity indices, India and the People’s Republic of China have significant bilateral trade potential, which remains unexplored until now. These countries are presently negotiating for free trade arrangements among them based on their complementarities. This paper makes an attempt to estimate the likely benefits in terms of gains or losses in imports of both India and China due to different preferential trading arrangements and free trade arrangements using the gravity model. Empirical results show that in the short run India’s potential gain is relatively less compared to China because of its high tariffs but in the long run, India’s gains are higher than China once its tariff levels are brought at par with them. Free trade arrangement is a win-win situation for both countries and is consistent with their growing dominance in the international trade.PTAs, FTA, gravity model, trade intensity indices, India- People Republic of China, bilateral trade flows, trade creation and trade diversion

Are there any roles for social conformity and deviance in poverty? : insights from a field study on working poverty and educational investment in Bangladesh

In recent decades the Indian subcontinent has displayed remarkable invariance in the incidence of working poverty despite strong economic performance. It is widely held that education can rescue households from various types of poverty traps created by information problems and incorrect expectations. Yet we know very little about the motivation of the working poor in acquiring education. From a field study conducted in Bangladesh, we gain invaluable insights for the first time, to our best understanding, into the factors that shape the decision of a poor household to care about and respond to educational decisions of others in one’s community. Based on the 'choice-theoretic framework of rational emulation and deviance', we empirically explain why some households choose to copy others, while some choose deviance even though social deviance in acquiring education can throw subjects into abject poverty