Modeling and Policy Impact Analysis(MPIA) Network

A paper presented during the 4th PEP Research Network General Meeting,June 13-17, 2005, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Modeling and Policy Impact Analysis(MPIA) Network

Saibal KarIndia

Urban Informal Sectorand Poverty Effects ofTrade Reform in India

Saibal KarIndia

Urban Informal Sectorand Poverty Effects ofTrade Reform in India

A Research Proposal submitted to ‘Poverty and Economic Policy’ Network

‘Urban Informal Sector and Poverty – Effects of Trade Reform in India’

Research Team Prof. Sugata Marjit Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, India Dr. Saibal Kar* Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, India Ms. Rituparna Bhattacharya Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, India

November 2004

Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, India

R-1 B.P. Township, Kolkata 700 094, India.

Telephone: +91-33-2462 5794/5795/7252

Fax: +91-33 2462 6183

URL: www.cssscal.org

* Corresponding Member. E-Mail: saibal@cssscal.org

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I. Main Research Questions and Core Research Objectives Purpose of the Research

1. Main Issue: The basic issue we wish to address is how liberalization of trade

and investment, privatisation and dismantling of the public sector has affected the

present state of the informal sector in India and more importantly, what impact

have such changes lain on the incidence of income poverty in India. We also

provide a regional-level study on West Bengal, where the informal sector has

been largely responsible for recent growth in output and income.

II. Scientific Contributions, Relevance and Knowledge Gaps

1. Background, Motivation and Knowledge Gaps: As in other developing

countries, an overwhelmingly large proportion (approximately 93%, and

excluding agriculture about 85%) of the workforce in India is employed in the

informal sector. A substantial portion of such employment opportunities is

generated in the urban or semi-urban areas and not surprisingly a majority of this

workforce is economically marginalized. High incidence of poverty among these

groups exposed to difficult and hazardous working conditions, non-existent social

security or health benefit schemes other than poorly functioning state-provided

medical facilities, and etc., is quite common. Sustained improvements in the

living standards of these groups can only be brought about by capital

accumulation, productivity gains and wage increases in this sector. Thus, a clear

understanding of the impact of economic liberalization on the informal sector is

of critical importance in developing pro-poor economic policies in India and

similar other low-income countries.

Many parts of South Asia, Latin America and Africa have experienced a process

of relative industrial decline in the last two decades. Liberalization and reduction

of state investment in public sector industries has contributed significantly to this

decline. On the other hand, some of these countries have also experienced

agricultural growth, reduction in poverty, and, in some aspects, gender inequality.

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Nonetheless, the size of the (non-agricultural) informal sector remains large.

Surprisingly, however, there has been no comprehensive investigation of

contemporary trends in this sector, other than disaggregated case studies. Thus,

analysis of the Indian evidence, and experience, promises to yield important

policy insights that can be generalized to other regional contexts.

2. Principal Objectives and A Brief Note on the Structure of the Indian

Economy: Downsizing of the formal organized sector, as a consequence of

deregulation, tends to increase the size of the informal sector, where market forces

are much more active and labour laws lax or non-existent. There is considerable

evidence that deregulatory policies or a process of liberalization tends to increase

output as well as employment in the informal sector. There is also a general

apprehension, however, that this expansion is associated with a wage crash in the

informal sector. This apprehension provides an impetus to criticisms of

deregulation and privatisation. Recent studies have examined this issue in

sufficient detail (Marjit, Kar and Sarkar (2003), Marjit, Kar and Beladi (2003),

Marjit (2003), and Kar and Marjit (1999)). These studies show that contraction in

the formal sector may actually lead to both higher employment and wages in the

informal sector. This is likely if either capital is sufficiently mobile between

formal and informal sectors, or if a capital-intensive segment within the informal

sector contracts in response to deregulation. Marjit, Kar and Sarkar (2003) have

also provided evidence of substantial growth of wage rates in the informal sector

in most parts of India.1 Our principal research objective is to build on this work,

both theoretically and empirically, and extend the results to capture the

connection between developments in the informal sector and incidence of urban

poverty across various states in India, over the last two decades.

However, before we embark on the issue at hand, it might be instructive to

provide an outlook on the macroeconomic conditions prevailing in India at

present. In the process we also offer a brief account for the structure of external

exchanges, poverty indicators at the national and regional (state) levels, the

unemployment picture and some comments on the evolution of household

1 The full version of this paper is available under SGP conference at www.wider.unu.edu

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income/consumption patterns.2

India’s macroeconomic condition in the post-liberalization era deserves special

attention. Certain emerging features of the economy seem to be quite positive,

although one has to admit that medium and long-run implications of these features

are yet to be fully understood. Since, it is beyond our scope to discuss all the

aspects of the current macroeconomic situation, we shall examine only the most

important ones.

Need for Reforms, Foreign Exchange Reserves and Related Issues:

India’s foreign exchange reserves have reached unprecedented heights during the

last few years as depicted in table 1. The present state of the foreign exchange

reserves in India is an outcome of a sustained period of impressive capital

account surpluses along with a sporadically impressive current account situation

(for the years 2001-02 and 2002-03). This signifies as a remarkable turnaround

within the span of a decade given the fact that in 1991 India had to prove her

creditworthiness by physically transferring gold to potential lenders. In the

present context, a substantial foreign exchange reserves in India has reduced the

possibilities of sudden capital flights from the country and recurrent depreciation

of the rupee against dollar. Moreover, this has substantially reduced the

possibility of currency depreciation following speculative attacks on the currency.

In short, among many positive implications of such changes, improvement in the

creditworthiness of the economy and higher inflow of foreign resources could be

viewed as some of the most important achievements.

Accumulations of reserves do have other macroeconomic implications as well. It

increases the ‘liquidity’ of the economic system. Higher foreign exchange

reserves lead to an increase in the monetary base, i.e. the stock of high-powered

money. This is portrayed in table 2. As it can be seen here, the stock of

high-powered money has increased from $ 99505 million in the immediate pre-

liberalization era to $ 416982 million (up to 26th March 2004) in the post-

liberalization period.

2 In this conection, we thank Nabil ANNABI, Bernard Decaluwé and John Cockburn for providing very useful comments on our initial proposal.

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The real sector, on the other hand, has also received substantial growth impetus in

the post liberalization era. Further investigations are however necessary in order

to understand as to how much the growth in some of these sectors including the

IT, the automobiles etc. would have any positive impact on the deplorable poverty

situation that most parts of India is still afflicted with. At times, it might appear

that the post-liberalization euphoria and the corresponding expectations about the

market demand turned out to be far from reality. Other uncertain factors that also

have continued to affect investment decisions adversely include government

policies, bureaucratic hurdles, labor market related problems etc., each of which is

still in desperate need for further reforms.3 The following Tables (See Appendix

I) provide some inferences on the existing macroeconomic picture in India with

emphasis on the level of foreign exchange reserves, Balance of Payment statistics,

official currency exchange rates prevailing vis-à-vis other major currencies,

export performances etc.

In order to answer some of the above questions, Kar and Guha-Khasnobis (2004)

provide a brief compendium on the state of poverty reduction in India as reflected

in various measures carried out during the post-reform decade in India. The

purpose of this study has been two-fold. First, it provides a brief survey of the

existing evidence on the subject of poverty and income inequality in the post-

reform India. Second, the pervasiveness of economic restructuring with trade

reforms as the most visible of its instruments strongly pushed a related study. In

fact, the causality between ‘trade openness’ in India and the measures of poverty

seemed relatively under-explored. Although the findings in this regard are

exploratory in nature, important policy implications follow.

Studies on poverty in India categorically speak of various measures of poverty, of

economic growth and poverty connections, of redistribution and poverty, of

poverty and inequality and more recently – as this particular study focuses on – of

economic reforms and poverty.

There is little doubt that the economic reforms since early 1990s had significant 3 See for example, Bardhan, Pranab (2002), The politics of economic reform in India, http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/macarthur/inequality/papers/BardhanReformIndia.pdf.

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impacts on the income and poverty levels in both rural and urban India. A

number of recent empirical studies show that the percentage of poverty has

declined both at the all-India and at the regional (States / UTs) levels.4 The

causes underlying such changes are diverse. Not surprisingly, the evolving

relationships between poverty and inequality too have numerous interpretations,

of which a notable contribution is available in Dreze and Sen (2002).

Using an international poverty line of around $1 per day at 1993 Purchasing

Power Parity, it is estimated that about one third of the poor in the mid-1990s

lived in India (Datt and Ravallion, 2002a). Therefore, what happens to the

incidence of absolute poverty in India is quantitatively important to the world’s

overall progress in fighting absolute poverty. In India, the decadal average

growth rates for 1960s and ‘70s were around 3.4%, implying per capita growth

rates of about 1%. The growth rates in national output since the mid-1980s, and in

particular since 1993 have been appreciably higher on average than in the 1960s

and ‘70s. The growth rate in net national product per capita was 4.8% per annum

between 1993/94 and 1999/00. It is widely believed that the reforms of the 1990s

were instrumental in achieving higher growth. However, it is not clear how much

India’s poor have shared in those gains.

Before focusing on the 1990s and to the connection between economic reforms

and poverty, we take a quick glance on the broader trends of growth rates and the

incidence of poverty between 1960-2000, as presented in Datt and Ravallion

(2002a, Table 1). They show that the poverty level has gone down considerably

although the stagnation in the rural poverty level has in fact increased the rural-

urban poverty ratio during these years.

In fact, the general picture in the 1990s is quite contentious. This stands firmly in

contrast to the broader consensus prevailing in the 1980s that poverty rates had

fallen appreciably during the decade. Generally speaking, two visibly polar

notions about the impact of reform on poverty dominate the literature, although

there are also some studies that do not find clear evidence on the influence of

economic reforms on poverty. One group strongly claims that poverty reduction

4 For example, Datt (1999), Datt and Ravallion (2002 a), Sundaram and Tendulkar (2003 a, b, c) etc. .

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in India in the decade of the 1990s have been summarily dismal. These studies

include those by Ninan (1994, 2000), Dev (1995), Tendulkar and Jain (1995),

Tendulkar and Jain (1995) and others.. Notably, Ninan (2000) provides a re-

estimate (following an initial estimate in 1994) of rural, urban and national level

poverty trends in India. It is claimed that, while rural, urban and overall national

poverty levels in India recorded a significant decline during the pre-reform

periods (1969-70 to 1990-91), during the post-reform period (1991-92 to 1993-

94), these negative trends have weakened or got reversed in terms of one or more

poverty indicators – namely, Head Count Ratio (henceforth, HCR), Poverty Gap

Index (henceforth, PGI) or Squared Poverty Gap Index (henceforth, SPGI).

Furthermore, majority of the fifteen larger states in India that contributed

positively towards overall poverty reduction in the pre-reform decades reported

statistically insignificant poverty reduction rates in the post-reform period –

Punjab and Haryana even reporting an actual increase in rural poverty.

A few other contemporary studies (Dev, 1995; Gupta, 1995; Tendulkar and Jain,

1995 and others), which might have been somewhat pre-mature in assessing the

role of economic reforms on poverty, also note increases in both rural and urban

poverty rates. Dev (1995) report an increase in poverty rates during the ‘first 18

months’, after economic reforms were initiated in India. Tendulkar and Jain

(1995), for example, claim a sharp increase in rural poverty rates with a moderate

rise in urban poverty rates during 1991-95, although the reforms were only

‘indirectly’ responsible for such a trend. Gupta (1995) believes that the losses

incurred due to the emancipation of the traditional Indian economy has been

moderate compared to the experiences of other developing countries, but the

‘social’ costs of such reforms were large enough to demand a ‘corrective course’.

Later studies readdress the issue of effect of economic reform on poverty and find

that in the second half of the 1990s rate of poverty reduction was significant,

especially in the urban areas. Datt (1999), for example, show that overall poverty

reduction has been moderate despite significant reductions in urban poverty,

mainly due to the stagnation in rural poverty rates. Datt & Ravallion (2002a,b)

make more general observations that states with ‘higher literacy, higher farm

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productivity, higher rural living standards, lower landlessness, and lower infant

mortality’ (2002 a, pp. 381) have gained relatively more from the pro-poor non-

farm economic growth in India, compared to states without these attributes. Datt,

Kozel and Ravallion (2003), further show estimates towards decline in poverty

rates between 1994-2000 from 39% to 34%. Sundaram and Tendulkar (2003b)

provide a re-estimate of their earlier study (2003a) to observe that a clear and

unambiguous decline in poverty between 1993-94 and 1999-00 tends to hold

good, although the magnitude gets dampened by 7 to 10 percentage points,

depending on the indicator and the population segment considered. Nonetheless,

there is a stronger claim that the average annual reduction in poverty In India

during the later half of the 1990s had been higher than that recorded during the

ten-and-a-half years prior to 1993-94. However, within rural and urban areas,

there could still be high incidences of poverty depending on the social groups

under consideration. Sundaram and Tendlkar (2003c) report that during the

decade of 1990s scheduled castes, agricultural labor (rural) and casual labor

(urban) experienced declining trends in income poverty although, scheduled tribe

households continued to suffer.

A few other studies, notably by Deaton and Dreze (2002) find no support for

sweeping claims that the nineties have been a period of ‘unprecedented

improvement’ or ‘widespread impoverishment’. Nonetheless, they draw a

number of lessons from their reexamination of the evidence on poverty and

inequality in the nineties. First, they find consistent evidence of continuing

poverty decline in the nineties, in terms of the ‘headcount ratio’. In view of the

methodological changes that took place between the 50th and 55th Rounds of the

National Sample Survey, they discussed alternative estimates, based on

comparable data from the two surveys and concluded that that a large part of the

poverty decline associated with official figures is ‘real’, rather than driven by

methodological changes. They argued for wider adoption of alternative poverty

indexes such as the poverty-gap index and find that this refinement does not, after

all, make much difference in this particular context5.

5 See tables, 2a, 2b and 5 and figure 1 in Deaton and Dreze (2002).

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The other part of the study by Kar and Guha-Khasnobis provides some simple

connection between the Trade Openness Index and the Coefficient of Variation in

all India poverty levels between 1973-74 and 1999-00 (tables 8 and 9 and figure 1

in Appendix I provides the data and results). The correlation coefficient between

TOI and COV at the all-India level is obtained as 0.85, significant at 10% level.

Furthermore, the study uses national level estimates of HCR for rural (R) and

urban (U) areas and calculates the degree of correlation between these measures

and the extent of trade openness in the country. Not surprisingly, the correlation

coefficient between TOI and HCR (U) is stronger (-0.79) than that between TOI

and HCR (R) at -0.40.

For the present proposal we intend to use some of these results in order to find a

direct connection between trade reforms, the state of the informal economy and

the poverty rates in India. The state of unemployment level in India is also

provided in the appendix (Table 10).

3. Key Hypotheses: Our theoretical starting point is the observation that capital

stock in the formal sector has an incentive to move to the informal sector in

response to deregulation in the formal sector. In the absence of major constraints

on such movements, this effect will contradict the negative impact, on informal

sector wage rates, of greater employment in the informal sector – typically the

consequence of labour-shedding in the formal sector. Once the trends in informal

wage is appropriately documented, we explore the poverty reducing effects of

such wage / income consequences. However, it is as well to provide some

information here on what Marjit and Kar (2004) found regarding the state of

informal wage in India between 1984-85 and 2000-01. Although, this study does

not explicitly relates to the poverty questions that forms the prime motivation

behind this proposal, it has been shown that the urban informal real wage has

increased substantially for workers hired under Non-Directory Manufacturing

enterprises in India. Table 11 in the appendix provides annual wage growths

between 1984-85 and 2000-01, along with a post-reform average.

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We intend to seek the relationship between such informal wage movements and

the poverty trends in India. The way we intend to deal with this project, an

exploration into such relationship will only serve as a starting point in this project.

Our main intention is to undertake a primary survey of both urban and rural

informal sectors in the state of West Bengal, which reported (West Bengal

Human Development Index) a phenomenal increase in the informal employment

and wages over the last few years. The primary survey should be designed to

account for the state of poverty in households where one or more persons work in

the informal sector. We will offer a detailed discussion on the survey mode

subsequently.

Besides, the trend in urban poverty in particular is expected to lend further insight

into its effects on rural incidence of poverty (over and above the direct

connections between rural informal activities and rural poverty) via channels of

rural-urban migration, which remains a predominant feature of the labor markets

in India.

The theoretical methodology incorporates a general equilibrium structure,

although we want to emphasize that the designed empirical study shall not be a

computable general equilibrium exercise, simply because it will clutter our results

(with too many variables used and too many cross-relationships in operation) and

shift away the focus away from the hypothesized relationship between informal

income and income poverty. Nonetheless, a copy of our theoretical results is

provided herewith for exemplifying our desired line of action. (See Uploaded

Attachment). It should also be mentioned that the available data on the

unorganized sector in India does provide fairly disaggregated account (across

gender, skill or occupation types, age groups including child labor etc), which

shall adequately be made use of. Nevertheless, there is need for caution involved

in connecting such data set with the poverty picture, not only because they are

compiled by different organizations with different sampling and estimation

methods in use, but also because the periods of these surveys mostly do not

match. Thus, we believe that our primary survey shall help correct some of the

time inconsistencies present in the available data sources and also help cross-

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checking the relationships (at lest for West Bengal) that have emerged from the

use of available secondary data.

4. Contributions of the Project: Theoretical and empirical investigation of

the hypotheses we have outlined above would allow one to develop a better

understanding of (a) the implications of deregulation for the well-being of the

poor, and (b) the nature of the structural constraints on inter-sectoral capital

mobility that restrict the actualisation of potential gains in terms of poverty

alleviation. While the insights gained would be open to generalization to most

developing countries, the empirical analysis would allow formulation of detailed

policy prescriptions relevant to India.

III. Policy Relevance

Direct-Indirect Impacts on Poverty and Target Groups: The importance of

our research agenda is attested to by the existence of a number of studies of trends

in the informal sector, both in India and elsewhere.6 Most of these studies are

however localized and gender or commodity specific. Furthermore, these studies,

by and large, are not theoretically grounded in a rigorous general equilibrium

framework and the issue of informal sector income and poverty in India is

seemingly unexplored. With the help of a comprehensive and theoretically

grounded investigation of the sort proposed here, we intend to bridge an existing

gap in the literature, both theoretically and empirically. The research findings

should be of considerable interest to an audience comprising federal and state

governments, policy makers both in the government and in the private financial

institutions, aid agencies and NGOs, and doubtless, of professional economists.

IV. Methodology

While the theoretical motivation of the proposed research has been briefly

outlined above, we will further explore other angles that involve important issues

6 See Vishwanathan et al. (2003); Pais (2002), Unni (2001), Mitra (1998), Zagha (1998), Mahadevia (1996), among others for trends in informal employment and output in India and other South East Asian countries. Also See Alleyne (2001) for Jamaica; Brand et al. (1993) for Zimbabwe; Tripp (1997) for Tanzania; Musyoki and Orodho (1993) for Kenya; Saavedra and Chong (1999) for Peru; Funkhouser (1994) for Central America etc. The literature also provides an elegant study by Goldberg and Pavcnik (2003) relating informal sector and trade reform for Brazil and Columbia.

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like tolerance of informal sector as a political substitute for non-existent social

security benefits in India and many other developing countries. The primary

phase of the project will be devoted to collection and processing of the data and

material available from secondary sources, such as from NSSO (National Sample

Survey Organization, Department of Statistics, Government of India). The study

by Marjit, Kar and Sarkar (2003) uses periodic (1984-85, 1989-90, 1994-99,

1999-00 and 200-01) data on informal manufacturing in India published by

various rounds of NSS. The subsequent data on incidence of poverty, measured

by using Head Count Ratio, Poverty Gap Index or Squared Poverty Gap Index,

also need to be collected from Consumer Expenditure surveys of NSS and from

the all-India survey of unorganized manufacturing sectors. In this regard, our

proposed research agenda must also take into account the already much debated

relationship between economic reform and its effect on the extent of income

poverty in India.7 For purpose of empirical investigation, we identify our target

variable to be the magnitude of income poverty in India and the main explanatory

variable as the informal wage, which again is dependent on the magnitudes of

external shocks, such as trade liberalization, and the degree of capital mobility

between formal and informal sectors. Therefore, our proposed study would

provide a clear causal relation between economic reform and urban poverty by

identifying the role of urban informal sector as a possible catalyst.

In a nutshell, the tentative methodology involves an account of the effect of

economic reforms on the level of informal activity in India, and in particular the

regions of West Bengal. Our final intention is to relate such developments in the

informal sector to the general poverty picture and in a sense account for the

impact of reforms on poverty. The empirical model, very tentatively presented

below should take the form:

tktTjt uTW 11 ++= βα

7 On the one hand, a group of studies claim that the rate of poverty reduction in the decade of the 1990s has been summarily dismal – see for example, Ninan (1994, 2000), Dev (1995), Tendulkar and Jain (1995), Tendulkar and Jain (1995), Sundaram and Tendulkar (2003a) etc. On the other hand, later studies by Datt (1999), Datt & Ravallion (2002a,b), Datt, Kozel and Ravallion (2003), Sundaram and Tendulkar (2003b), etc. report declining trends in poverty, mainly that in urban poverty rates.

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and (1) titjtMjtRjt uTWRP 22 ++++= ββα

where, W = Real Wage/Income of labor, R = Direct anti-policies by the government, T =

Trade reform, i.e. lowering of import duty in kth sector and P = Level of Poverty

(HCR or PGI); k= sector type; j = States / UTs in India, t= time in years.

V. Data Sources and Distribution of Work

1. While data requirement and available sources have already been mentioned in the

last section, there is need to obtain a continuous time series data set from this

source so as to cover a time span of two decades since 1980s. Thus, the second

part of our study should focus exclusively on collection and interpretation of

relevant data in line with the issues raised here. Our aim is to collect information

on the state of employment, wages and consumption levels of informal workers

across various locations in India from available secondary sources and undertake

a primary survey in West Bengal. The standard statistical and econometric tools

involving sampling methods, multi-stage regression analysis, ANOVA, use of

instrumental variables etc. will be deployed for carrying out our proposed

empirical investigations.

2. Thus, our primary focus remains on deriving generalised results that could be

used to address poverty alleviation objectives for a much greater audience, given

that the structure and the anatomy of the developing countries across the world

are significantly similar.

3. Distribution of the work between the members is planned as follows: the lead

researcher shall be responsible for outlining the theoretical and empirical

constructs of the proposed study over and above a continued monitoring of the

progress; the other member (Dr. Saibal Kar) shall be in charge of executing the

main analyses of the empirical observations for the study with due assistance from

Ms. Rituparna Bhattacharya, who will be in charge of the primary data collection.

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VI. Dissemination Plan and Tangible Output

Dissemination: We plan to hold a national level workshop to share our

findings with policy-makers, influential academics, politicians, labor leaders etc.,

and communicate extensively the main findings of our project to policy-makers

dealing with social and legal institutions and with poverty eradication policies. It

would be easy to conduct a program of this nature, as all members of the team are

well connected to the academic staff at various universities and research institutes

with vast experience in training and in addressing similar research questions.

The end users of the study would be:

1. The state and central governments in India, especially those within it concerned

with policy making in the ministries for industry, agriculture and labor;

2. Politicians and political parties;

3. Financial institutions including nationalized and private sector banks such that

better opportunities for development financing could be opened up for informal

entrepreneurs and workers and in the process bringing them in the mainstream

economic activity;

4. Opinion leaders, NGOs and other social activists, labor unions etc.

• Besides formal publication of individual studies in the form of academic articles,

the study along with the proceedings of the Conference may be published as a

book, under suitable guidance and permission from PEP. This is certainly a

possibility, given that the principal researcher has widely published his work with

the major publication houses such as Oxford University Press, Academic Press,

Springer-Verlag etc.

• Salient features of the study would be provided as public knowledge in the form

of WWW listing, and detailed papers should be made downloadable.

• Tangible Outputs: A set of papers to be published in refereed academic

journals, in popular media to catch public attention, a book as a collection of such

papers/ a national level workshop / counseling to parties interested in dealing with

post-reform informal sector and poverty alleviation scenario in the developing

world.

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VII. References Alleyne, Dillon (2001): The dynamics of growth, employment and economic reforms in Jamaica; Social and Economic Studies, 50, 1, 55-125. Bardhan, Pranab (2002), The politics of economic reform in India,

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/macarthur/inequality/papers/BardhanReformIndia.pdf. Datt, Gaurav (1999), Has poverty declined since economic reforms? Statistical data analysis, Economic and Political Weekly, December 11. Datt, Gaurav and Ravallion, Martin (2002a), Why has economic growth been more pro-poor in some states of India than others? Journal of Development Economics, 68, 381-400. Datt, Gaurav and Ravallion, Martin (2002b), Is India’s economic growth leaving the poor behind? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 16, 3, summer 2002, 89-108. Datt, Gaurav, Kozel, Valerie and Ravallion, Martin (2003) A model-based assessment of India’s progress in reducing poverty in the 1990s, Economic and Political Weekly, Jan 25. Deaton, Angus and Dreze, Jean (2002), Poverty and inequality in India: A reexamination, Economic and Political Weekly, September 7. Dev, S Mahendra (1995), Economic reforms and the rural poor, Economic and PoliticalWeekly, 19 August. Dreze, J and Sen, Amratya (2002), India – Development and Participation, Oxford, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Brand, V. et al. (1993): Women informal sector workers and structural adjustments in Zimbabwe, In Social Change and Economic Reform in Africa; Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies. Funkhouser, Edward (1994): The urban informal sector in Central America: Household Survey Evidence; University of California, Santa Barbara Working Papers in Economics: 23-94. Goldberg, Pinelopi and Nina Pavcnik (2003): The response of the informal sector to trade liberalization; NBER Working Paper # 9443. Gupta, S. P. (1995), Economic reforms and its impact on the poor, Economic and Political Weekly, June 3. Kar, Saibal & S. Marjit (2001): Informal sector in general equilibrium: welfare effects of trade policy reforms; International Review of Economics and Finance, 10, 289-300. Kar, Saibal and B. Guha-Khasnobis (2004), Trade openness, poverty and food security in India; unpublished manuscript, UNU-WIDER. Lal, Deepak, Natarajan, I and Mohan, Rakesh (2002), Economic reforms and poverty alleviation: India – A tale of two surveys, UCLA Dept. of Economics Working Paper # 822 (2002). Mahadevia, Darshini (1996): Informalization of employment and incidence of poverty in Ahmedabad; Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 41, 3, 515-30. Marjit, Sugata (2003): Economic reform and informal wage- A general equilibrium analysis, Journal of Development Economics, 72, 371-378

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Marjit, S., S. Kar and H. Beladi (2003): Trade reform and informal sector; mimeo, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Marjit, S., Saibal. Kar, and P. Sarkar (2003): Trade Reform, internal capital mobility and informal wage – Theory and evidence, mimeo, Centre for studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, India. Full text available under SGP conference at WIDER, Helsinki. Website: www.wider.unu.edu Mitra, Arup (1998): Employment in the informal sector; Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 41,3. Musyoki, A. & J. Orodho (1993): Urban women workers in the informal sector and economic change in Kenya in the 1980s, In Social change and economic reform in Africa, 106-33, Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies. Ninan, K. N. (1994), Poverty and income distribution in India, Economic and Political Weekly, June 18. Ninan, K. N. (2000), Economic reforms in India: Impact on the poor and poverty reduction, Sussex: IDS Working Paper # 102. NSSO, 1989 (40th Round), 1993 (45th Round), 1996 (51st Round), 1999 (55th Round), Survey of unorganized manufacture, Department of Statistics, Government of India. Pais, Jesim (2002): Casualisation of urban labour force – Analysis of recent trends in manufacturing; Economic and Political Weekly, Feb 16, Special Article. Saavedra, J. & Alberto Chong (1999): Structural reform, institutions and earnings: evidence from the formal and informal sectors in Urban Peru; Journal of Development Studies, 35, 4, 95-116. Sundaram, K and Tendulkar, S (2003a), Poverty has declined in the 1990s: A resolution of comparability problems in NSS Consumer Expenditure, Economic and Political weekly, Jan 4. Sundaram, K and Tendulkar, S (2003b), Poverty in India in the 1990s – Revised results for all-India and 15 major states for 1993-94, Economic and Political Weekly, Nov 15. Sundaram, K and Tendulkar, S (2003c), Poverty among social and economic groups in India in 1990s, Economic and Political Weekly, Dec 13. Tendulkar, S and L. Jain (1995), Economic reforms and poverty, Economic and Political Weekly, June 10. Tripp, A. M. (1997): Changing the rules: the politics of liberalization and the urban informal economy in Tanzania; Berkeley and London: University of California Press. Unni, Jeemol (2001): Gender and informality in labour market in South Asia; Economic and Political Weekly, June 30, Special Article. Vishwanathan, P. K et al. (2003): Informal labour market and structural devolution; Economic and Political Weekly, August 2. Zagha, Robert (1998): Labor and India’s economic reforms; Journal of Policy Reform, 2,4, 403-26.

16

VIII. Prior Training and Expertise Please consult short CVs attached herewith for prior training and expertise of the researchers in issues and projects of this nature. IX. Capacity Building

The Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta is a multi-disciplinary institute

with substantial research work done in the fields of economics, sociology, political

science, law and governance, gender and cultural studies. A project of this nature with

building up of a database and analyses on informal sector and poverty can be of sufficient

importance and use to researchers in other fields and for students alike. Besides, research

and teaching in this institute reaches a very wide audience including students, teachers,

government departments, NGOs, etc., not only in the province of West Bengal, but in

India as well. We also offer a one-year Research Training Program to participants from

all over India and to international students mainly from Africa and Asia, where

techniques used in practical research questions of this sort and results thereof, can be

easily disseminated much to their interest and benefit. Extent and reach of this program

along with interests and contributions of the faculty can be obtained from our website:

www.cssscal.org

X. Ethical, Social, Gender, Environmental Issues or Risks None that we are aware of. XI. Appendix I XII. List of Projects Undertaken and Brief CVs of Members of the

Research Team

17

Appendix I

TABLE: 1 Foreign Exchange Reserves

$ US million.

PRE – LIBERALIZATION ERA POST – LIBERALIZATION ERA YEAR LEVEL GROWTH (%) YEAR LEVEL GROWTH

(%) 1980 - 81 6823 (-) 7.31 1992-93 9832 6.64 1981-82 4390 (-) 35.65 1993-94 19254 95.83 1982-83 4896 11.53 1994-95 25186 30.81 1983-84 5649 15.38 1995-96 21687 (-) 13.89 1984-85 5952 5.36 1996-97 26423 21.84 1985-86 6520 9.54 1997-98 29367 11.14 1986-87 6574 0.828 1998-99 32490 10.63 1987-88 6223 (-) 5.34 1999-00 38036 17.07 1988-89 4802 (-) 22.83 2000-01 42281 11.16 1989-90 3962 (-) 17.49 2001-02 54106 27.97 1990-91 5834 47.25 2002-03 75428 36.79 1991-92 9220 58.04 2003-04 74805 (-) 0.826 2004 110317* 47.47

Source: Handbook of statistics on Indian Economy, Reserve Bank of India and different publications of Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI &S).

Note: * stock of reserves up to 26th March 2004.

TABLE: 2 Monetary Base (Reserve Money, Rs crores (0.1 bn))

PRE-LIBERALIZATION ERA. POST-LIBERALIZATION ERA.

YEAR LEVEL GROWTH YEAR LEVEL GROWTH 1980-81 19452 17.37 1992-93 110779 11.33 198182 20998 7.95 1993-94 138672 25.18 1982-83 23110 10.06 1994-95 169283 22.07 1983-84 28994 25.46 1995-96 194457 14.87 1984-85 35216 21.46 1996-97 199985 2.84 1985-86 38156 8.37 1997-98 226402 13.21 1986-87 44808 17.41 1998-99 259285 14.52 1987-88 53489 19.37 1999-00 280555 8.20 1988-89 62958 17.70 2000-01 303311 8.11 1989-90 77591 23.24 2001-02 337970 11.43 1990-91 87779 13.13 2002-03 369061 9.20 1991-92 99505 13.36 2003-04 436429 18.25 2004 416982* (-) 4.45

Note: * indicates value of the corresponding variable up to 26

Source: Different issues of Reserve Bank of India Bulletin. th March 2004

18

Table 3

Balance of Payment Summary

YEAR CURRENT ACCOUNT TO GDP RATIO

CAPITAL ACCOUNT TO GDP RATIO

OVERALL BLANCE TO GDP RATIO

PRE-LIBERALIZATION ERA. 1980-81 (-) 1.70 1.01 (-) 0.691 1981-82 (-) 1.87 0.385 (-) 1.48 1982-83 (-) 1.93 1.19 (-) 0.749 1983-84 (-) 1.67 1.38 (-) 0.291 1984-85 (-) 1.29 1.68 0.389 1985-86 (-) 2.39 2.21 (-) 0.177 1986-87 (-) 2.09 2.07 (-) 0.022 1987-88 (-) 1.99 2.07 0.080 1988-89 (-) 3.06 3.09 0.026 1989-90 (-) 2.60 2.65 0.052 1990-90 (-) 3.40 2.52 (-) 0.875 1991-91 (-) 0.379 1.61 1.23

POST-LIBERALIZATION ERA. 1992-93 (-) 1.90 1.76 (-) 0.131 1993-94 (-) 0.465 3.89 3.43 1994-95 (-) 1.15 3.13 1.98 1995-96 (-) 1.83 1.45 (-) 0.377 1996-97 (-) 1.31 3.26 1.95 1997-98 (-) 1.50 2.70 1.20 1998-99 (-) 1.05 2.19 1.14 1999-00 (-) 1.16 2.74 1.58 2000-01 (-) 0.603 2.06 1.46 2001-02 0.328 2.41 2.74 2002-03 0.891 2.61 3.50

Source: Handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy, Reserve Bank of India and RBI Bulletin. Note: All the figures are in percentage.

19

TABLE: 4

India’s Exchange Rates with Major Currencies & Depreciation (-) /Appreciation (+) of Rupee in 2003

MONTH US$ APPR. (+) / DEPR. (-)

EURO APPR. (+) / DEPR. (-)

£ APPR. (+) / DEPR. (-)

YEN APPR. (+) / DEPR. (-)

JANUARY 47.84 0.42 50.78 (-) 3.8 77.32 (-) 1.5 0.4026 (-) 2.51 FEBRUARY 47.65 0.4 51.36 (-) 1.11 76.85 0.61 0.3989 0.94 MARCH 47.55 0.2 51.4 (-) 0.09 75.29 2.07 0.4009 (-) 0.51 APRIL 47.28 0.58 51.43 (-) 0.06 74.49 1.08 0.394 1.77 MAY 47.01 0.58 54.41 (-) 5.47 76.24 (-) 2.3 0.4 (-) 1.5 JUNE 46.63 0.82 54.44 (-) 0.07 77.37 (-) 1.46 0.3947 1.33 JULY 46.15 1.03 52.48 3.74 75.02 3.13 0.389 1.47 AUGUST 45.87 0.61 51.13 2.64 73.11 2.62 0.3859 0.81 SEPTEMBER 45.75 0.26 51.27 (-) 0.27 73.54 (-) 0.59 0.3965 (-) 2.69 OCTOBER 45.30 (-) 0.17 52.97 (-) 3.21 75.94 (-) 3.21 0.4137 (-) 4.16 NOVEMBER 45.40 1.01 53.11 (-) 0.26 76.68 (-) 0.96 0.4157 (-) 0.47 DECEMBER 45.59 (-) 0.24 55.84 (-) 4.89 79.57 (-) 3.64 0.4217 (-) 1.42 Source: Handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy, Reserve Bank of India and different publications of

Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI&S).

TABLE: 5 India’s Export Performance (U.S.A. and other OECD countries)

$ US million

OECD COUNTRIES U.S.A. YEAR EXP. IMP. NET EXP. EXP. IMP. NET EXP. 1993-94 5281.85 5595.3 (-) 11175.80 3994.87 2738.81 1256.06 1994-95 6479.41 7097.35 (-) 13855.40 5022.08 2906.53 2115.55 1995-96 7770.51 9533.19 (-) 16133.00 5528.67 3866.98 1661.69 1996-97 7434.58 9252.62 (-) 16921.3 6560.95 3689 2871.95 1997-98 8038.59 10549.65 (-) 17968.6 6809.44 3721.36 3088.08 1998-99 7454.4 10569.64 (-) 17475.2 7198.03 3639.37 3558.66 1999-00 7987.65 9758.32 (-) 19459.00 8393.85 3568.3 4825.55 2000-01 8800.08 10399.01 (-) 21604.20 9251.55 2844.37 6407.18 2001-02 8319.62 10273.06 (-) 20275.00 8542.34 3160.34 5382 2002-03 9172.75 10846.86 (-) 23883.70 10883.76 4429 6454.76

Source: Handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy, Reserve Bank of India and different publications of Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI&S).

Note: In the category of other OECD countries we have included: Denmark, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy and U.K.

20

TABLE: 6

Some Important Macroeconomic Indicators

YEAR SAVINGS LESS INVESTMENT TO GDP RATIO

GROSS FISCAL DEFICIT TO GDP RATIO

CURRENT ACCOUNT BALANCE TO GDP RATIO

PRE-LIBERALIZATION ERA 1980-81 5.72 6.38 (-) 1.70 1981-82 1.97 5.70 (-) 1.87 1982-83 3.27 6.27 (-) 1.93 1983-84 4.78 6.56 (-) 1.67 1984-85 5.25 7.82 (-) 1.29 1985-86 3.77 8.76 (-) 2.39 1986-87 4.30 9.47 (-) 2.09 1987-88 6.48 8.56 (-) 1.99 1988-89 5.13 8.17 (-) 3.06 1989-90 6.89 8.13 (-) 2.60 1990-91 8.08 8.74 (-) 3.40 1991-92 7.71 6.166 (-) 0.379

POST-LIBERALIZATION ERA 1992-93 5.50 5.97 (-) 1.90 1993-94 9.78 7.71 (-) 0.465 1994-95 9.38 6.29 (-) 1.15 1995-96 4.70 5.61 (-) 1.83 1996-97 7.45 5.37 (-) 1.31 1997-98 6.39 6.40 (-) 1.50 1998-99 8.41 7.09 (-) 1.05 1999-00 9.23 5.96 (-) 1.16 2000-01 10.56 6.27 (-) 0.603 2001-02 11.48 6.81 0.328 2002-03 - 6.49 0.891

Source: National Account Statistics (new series), CSO. Note: All the figures are in percentage.

21

TABLE: 7

Some Important Macroeconomic Indicators YEAR CONSUMPTION

TO GDP RATIO SAVINGS TO GDP RATIO*

SAVINGS TO GDP RATIO**

INVESTMENT TO GDP

RATIO***

INVESTMENT TO GDP RATIO

^

PRE-LIBERALIZATION ERA 1980-81 91.43 17.06 20.85 11.34 9.30 1981-82 90.24 15.64 20.62 13.68 11.17 1982-83 87.08 15.45 20.27 12.18 11.88 1983-84 87.79 15.82 19.43 11.04 10.71 1984-85 86.04 17.56 20.68 12.31 11.50 1985-86 84.11 18.12 21.71 14.35 12.02 1986-87 83.72 17.76 21.19 13.45 12.50 1987-88 82.34 20.60 23.07 14.11 10.68 1988-89 79.07 20.91 23.23 15.78 10.60 1989-90 77.34 22.56 24.42 15.67 10.59 1990-91 75.77 24.48 25.70 16.39 10.39 1991-92 75.75 22.24 24.43 14.54 9.78

POST-LIBERALIZATION ERA 1992-93 74.42 22.44 24.20 16.94 9.51 1993-94 73.56 24.08 24.78 14.31 9.07 1994-95 72.42 25.58 27.42 16.20 9.62 1995-96 71.35 25.59 27.84 20.89 8.48 1996-97 72.67 23.67 25.51 16.22 7.73 1997-98 70.62 23.88 25.33 17.48 7.24 1998-99 71.30 24.54 23.46 16.12 7.17 1999-00 72.07 27.67 26.58 18.44 7.66 2000-01 70.73 28.47 25.94 17.91 7.07 2001-02 70.99 29.37 26.58 17.88 7.01

Source: National Account Statistics (new series), CSO Note: All the statistics in percentage.

*, **, *** , ^ are private savings to GDP ratio, national savings to GDP ratio, private investment to GDP ratio and public investment to GDP ratio respectively.

22

Table 8 State-wise Percentage of Population Below Poverty Line in India

1973-74 1977-78 1983-84 1987-88 1993-94 1999-00 State / UT % % % % % % Andhra Pradesh 48.86 39.31 28.91 25.86 22.19 15.77 Arunachal Pradesh 51.93 58.32 40.88 36.22 39.35 33.47 Assam 51.21 57.15 40.77 36.21 40.86 36.09 Bihar 61.91 61.55 62.22 52.13 54.96 42.6 Goa 44.26 37.23 18.9 24.52 14.92 4.4 Gujarat 48.15 41.23 32.79 31.54 24.21 14.07 Haryana 35.36 29.55 21.37 16.64 25.05 8.74 Himachal Pradesh 26.39 32.45 16.4 15.45 28.44 7.63 Jammu and Kashmir 40.83 38.97 24.24 23.82 25.17 3.48 Karnataka 54.47 48.78 38.24 37.53 33.16 20.04 Kerala 58.79 52.22 40.42 31.79 25.43 12.72 Madhya Pradesh 61.78 61.78 49.78 43.07 42.52 37.43 Maharashtra 53.24 55.88 43.44 40.41 36.86 25.02 Manipur 49.96 53.72 37.02 31.35 33.76 28.54 Meghalaya 50.2 55.19 38.81 33.92 37.92 33.87 Mizoram 50.32 54.38 36 27.52 25.66 19.47 Nagaland 50.81 56.04 39.25 34.43 37.92 32.67 Orissa 66.18 70.07 65.28 55.58 48.56 47.15 Punjab 28.15 19.27 16.18 13.2 11.77 6.16 Rajasthan 46.14 37.42 34.46 35.15 27.41 15.28 Sikkam 50.86 55.89 39.71 36.06 41.43 36.55 Tamil Nadu 54.94 54.79 51.66 43.39 35.03 21.12 Tripura 51 56.88 40.03 35.23 39.01 34.44 Uttar Pradesh 57.07 49.05 47.07 41.46 40.85 31.15 West Bengal 63.43 60.52 54.85 44.72 35.66 27.02 Andaman and Nicobar Islands 55.56 55.42 52.13 43.88 34.47 20.99 Chandigarh 27.96 27.32 23.79 14.67 11.35 5.75 Dadra and Nagar Haveli 46.55 37.2 15.67 67.11 50.84 17.14 Delhi 49.61 33.23 26.22 12.41 14.69 8.23 Daman and Diu - - - - 15.8 4.44 Lakshadweep 59.68 52.79 42.36 34.95 25.04 15.6 Pondicherry 53.82 53.25 50.05 41.46 37.4 21.67 All-India 54.88 51.32 44.48 38.86 35.97 26.1 Mean 49.9812903 48.285484 37.706452 34.247742 31.802813 21.521875 SD 9.89189862 12.069334 13.145667 12.506225 11.184037 12.388167 COV 19.791203 24.995782 34.863177 36.516934 35.166816 57.560819

Source: NSSO - various rounds and own calculations

23

Table 9

Year TOI COV 1973-74 8.825059 19.7912

1977-78 12.58812 24.99578

1983-84 12.6399 34.86318

1987-88 11.99442 36.51693

1993-94 18.32613 35.16682

1999-00 21.21388 57.56082

Source: Foreign Trade Statistics of India, NSSO and own calculations

Figure 1

Trends in Trade Openness and Coefficient of Variation in Poverty

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

1973-74 1977-78 1983-84 1987-88 1993-94 1999-00 Years

Degrees

Trade Openess COV of Poverty across States

24

Table 10

(in Millions)

Year Unemployment levels in India

1985 26.27 1986 30.13 1987 30.25 1988 30.05 1989 32.78 1990 34.89 1991 36.76 1992 36.31 1993 36.04 1994 36.69 1995 36.74 1996 37.43 1997 39.14 1998 40.09 1999 40.37 2000 41.34 2001 42.07 2002 41.17

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Government of India

25

Table 11

Table Showing Annual Growth Rates of Real Informal Wage for

States and Union Territories in India

States 1984-85 to

1989-90 1989-90 to

1994-95 1994-95 to

1999-00 1999-00 to

2000-01 Post Reform

Average AP -14.9383 38.37914 0.351421 5.54216 14.75757 AS -12.5909 9.400387 0.502013 19.94701 9.949804 BH -12.4796 9.259229 -0.91022 37.41843 15.25582 GJ -8.01461 5.856186 3.761828 9.471879 6.363298 HY -15.417 23.39205 -4.11872 33.07289 17.44874 HP -11.5206 -0.34082 3.509483 24.55454 9.241068 KA -12.8237 21.54953 7.021524 13.43834 14.00313 KE -14.8953 12.55645 2.686628 21.20452 12.1492 MP -12.6123 22.41174 1.455013 13.11878 12.32851 MH -6.4 9.7482 5.247609 11.28708 8.760962 OR -13.1553 22.78583 -2.38878 33.1919 17.86298 PN -15.1443 12.20414 -1.06954 44.061 18.39853 RJ -15.4959 32.53101 -1.34439 33.03571 21.40744 TN -10.1074 6.406688 14.13201 11.49062 10.67644 TR -14.3066 14.89337 -5.45877 45.36927 18.26796 UP -13.2014 18.00436 -1.58454 26.79013 14.40332 WB -11.2556 11.41085 -7.25447 15.29931 6.485231 AN 14.62978 3.202789 2.910365 6.914311 CH 19.21098 5.496664 12.4677 12.39178 DN 9.828439 -4.01589 37.7676 14.52672 DH 13.26679 20.39249 12.10498 15.25476 LA -0.21334 9.929694 7.832409 5.849589 PO 20.77112 -3.96475 -18.5548 -0.58281 GO 20.50309 0.947838 23.74566 15.06553 JK 20.71262 2.838103 33.64066 19.06379 MA 24.9116 -4.18481 26.83254 15.85311 ME 18.91503 -5.28746 33.57459 15.73405 MI 19.93168 -6.92451 24.69716 12.56811 NA 15.62657 -1.96228 25.16228 12.94219 SI 28.81384 -0.01264 42.15758 23.65293

Source: NSS Reports on Unorganized Sector in India, NSSO – Various Rounds, and Own Calculations

26

Figure 2

Annual Growth Rates of Informal Real Wage

-30

-20

-10

0

10

20

30

40

50

AP AS BH GJ HY HP KA KE MP MH OR PN RJ TN TR UPWB AN CH DN DH LA PO GO JK MA ME MI

NA SI

States

Perc

enta

ge

84-85 89-90 89-90 94-95 94-95 99-00 99-00 00-01 PostRefAvg

27

CURRICULUM VITAE Name: Sugata Marjit Address: Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta R-1, B. P. Township, Calcutta - 700 094,India Tel: 91-33-2462 5794 / 5795 / 7252 Fax: 91-33-2462 6183 E-mail address: smarjit@hotmail.com Date of Birth: December 4, 1959 Marital Status: Married Citizenship: Indian Academic Qualifications and Awards: * BA (hons.) in Economics, Presidency College, Calcutta, First Class Third, National

Scholarship for Post Graduate Studies * MA in Economics, Calcutta University, 1980, First Class First * MA in Economics, University of Rochester, 1983, joined the Department of

Economics as a research fellow in fall 1981 * Ph.D. in Economics, University of Rochester, 1985, thesis defended in the Fall

1984, special dissertation fellowship awarded in summer 1984 Current Position: Reserve Bank of India Professor of Industrial Economics, Centre

for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, India Complete CV: www.saneinetwork.org/pdf/researchers/SugataMarjit.pdf Positions Held (India): Reserve Bank of India Professor of Industrial Economics-CSSS, Calcutta, May 2003- Sukhamoy Chakravorty Professor of Economics - CESP, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi -

September 2000 - December 2000. (On leave from CSSS) Professor, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (CSSS) Calcutta, Feb 1997 – May 2003. Professor, Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta, Dec 1994 - Feb 1997 Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor), Monash University, 1994, Feb-Nov Reader (Associate Professor), Jadavpur University, 1989-1993 Lecturer, Jadavpur University, 1985-1989 Projects Completed and Underway:

• Recipient of research projects sponsored by the Export-Import Bank of India for measuring "Transactions Costs of Indian Exports", 1998.

• United Bank of India for "Analytical History of the United Bank of India, 1950-2000", by the Industrial Development Bank of India for "Interest Rates, Investment Demand and Industrial Growth - A Medium Term Study".

• The Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India for “An Analytical Appraisal of the Tolerable Limits of the NPAs of Indian Banks”.

• SANEI V project on “Trade Potentials of South Asian Economies Under the New Global Trade Regime: The Role of Some Non-Price Factors – A Case Study of India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka”, 2002-2003.

• Also awarded a research grant by the Global Development Network for conducting research on Trade Problems in South Asia.

• Project underway for SANEI VI, Globalization, Income Inequality and Regional Disparity – Analyzing the Indian Experience in the 1990s’.

• Project underway for ENRECA, Denmark, ‘Globalization and Industrial Disparity – An Interregional Perspective’.

28

Awards and Membership: • Regularly appears as an economic commentator in the well-known Television channels,

All India Radio and the BBC. • Panchanan Chakravarty Memorial Award awarded by the Bengal Economic Association

for promoting teaching and research in economics (1999) in Bengal. • Recipient of the best paper award of US$10000 from the Global Development Network

(World Bank) on the theme “Globalization and Inequality” (2003) • Recently made member of the committee in charge of suggesting future reforms in

Trade, Industry Competition, and Private sector development set up by the Government of India in collaboration with Asian Development Bank.

• Chairman of the Jury Committee for the International Economics Research Award (2000) given by The Export-Import Bank of India.

• Has been trained as a North-Indian classical vocalist for many years and have performed in many concerts in India, Europe, USA and Australia. Awarded by the State Drama Academy, Government of West Bengal, India, for composing the best musical score for a play in 1995.

Research Interest and Selected Recent Publications: • International economics; economic development; economics of corruption and

governance; banking and finance; rational choice models of political economy; West Bengal economy and Indian economy.

• India's exports: An analytical study (with Ajitava Raychaudhuri) Publication: Delhi; Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

• (With Rajat Acharyya) International Trade, Wage Inequality and The Developing Economy - A General Equilibrium Approach. Research Monograph, Springer-Physica Verlag, 2003.

• (Edited with N. Singh) Foreign Investment, Technology Transfer and Joint Ventures in Developing Countries. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003.

• The Role of International Fragmentation in the Development Process. (With R. Jones) American Economic Review, May 2001.

• Economic Reform and Informal wage – A General Equilibrium Analysis Source: Journal of Development Economics, 72: 371-378.

• Protecting Consumers through Protection: The Role of Tariff-Induced Technology Transfer (with T. Kabiraj), Source: European Economic Review v47, n1 (February 2003): 113-24.

• Resolving the Credibility Problem of an Honest Government: A Case for Foreign Investment Subsidy. Source: Review of International Economics v7, n4 (November 1999): 625-31.

• The Three Faces of Factor Intensities (with R. Jones and H. Beladi). Source: Journal of International Economics v48, n2 (August 1999): 413-20.

• Complementarity between Import Competition and Import Promotion. (With H. Beladi). Journal of Economic Theory v86, n2 (June 1999): 280-85.

Editorial Work Member, Editorial Boards of Pacific Economic Review (Blackwell) Journal of Emerging Market Finance (Sage) (Ex. member)Review of International Economics (Blackwell) (Ex. Assoc. Editor) Review of Development Economics (Blackwell) Editorial Referee For American Economic Review Bulletin for Economic Research

29

Canadian Journal of Economics Economica Economics Letters Economic Journal European Economic Review European Journal of Political Economy Group Decision and negotiation International Economic Review International Journal of Industrial Organization International Review of Economics and Finance Journal of Quantitative Economics Journal of Economic Integration Journal of International Trade and Economic Development Journal of Development Economics Keio Economic Studies Rand Journal of Economics Review of International Economics Regional Science and Urban Economics Zeitschrift fur Nationalokonomie Visiting Positions

• SUNY (State University of New York) at Buffalo, U.S.A., fall 1986. Visiting Assistant Professor

• Cornell University, U.S.A., summer 1988. Visiting Assistant Professor • University of Florida, Gainesville, U.S.A., fall 1988. Visiting Assistant Professor - • Pennsylvania State University, Business School, spring 1989, Visiting Asst.

Professor • University of Konstanz, Germany, summer 1992, Guest Professor • University of Rochester, U.S.A., spring 1992. Visiting Associate Professor - • Chinese University of Hong Kong, Dept. of Decision Sciences, spring 1996.

Visiting Professor • Chinese University of Hong Kong, Dept. of Economics, spring 1999, Visiting

Professor • Northern Illinois University, Dept. of Economics, Spring 2000, - Visiting

Professor • City University of Hong Kong, Dept. of economics and Finance, spring 2001-

Visiting Professor • Singapore Management University- School of Economics, Spring 2003

Visiting Professor

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Curriculum Vitae Name: SAIBAL KAR Sex: Male Date of Birth: 18th January, 1971 Permanent Residence: Kolkata, 700 027, India. Phone Number (Res.): 91-33-2479 0470. Phone Number (Work): 91-33-2462 5794. Fax: 91-33-2462 6183 E-mail: skar1801@yahoo.com / saibal@cssscal.org Citizenship: Indian. Education (Recent First): 1998-2002: Ph.D. Degree in Economics (August 2002), Northern Illinois

University, USA. Fields: Labor Economics, Public Economics.

1996-1997: Research Student, Research Training Programme, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, India.

1993-1995: M. Sc. (Master of Science) Degree in Economics, Calcutta University, India.

Fields: International Trade, Development Economics. 1989-1992: B.Sc. (Bachelor of Science) Degree (Hons.) in Economics,

Asutosh College, Calcutta University, India. Fields and Specializations: Labor Economics, International Trade, Public Economics,

and Applied Microeconomics. Thesis Title: Asymmetric Information, Migration and Self-Employment.

Ph. D. Dissertation, August 2002, Northern Illinois University, USA.

Research and Teaching (Recent First): 2004(September-) RBI Fellow in Economics, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences,

Calcutta, India. 2003(Mar)-2004(Aug) RBI Research Officer, CSSSC. 2002-2003 Research Scholar, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta,

India. 2000-2002: Teaching Assistant, Northern Illinois University, USA. 1999-2000: Instructor in Economics, Northern Illinois University, USA. 1998-1999: Research Assistant, Economics Department, Northern Illinois

University, USA. 1997-1998: Research Associate, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences,

Calcutta, India. 1995-1996: Research Assistant, Economics Department, Calcutta University,

India. (University Grant Commission, India- Project on Informal Sector in India.)

Publications (Recent First): • Skill Formation and Trade Reform – Welfare Perspective of Developing

Countries. (with Hamid Beladi), Japan and the World Economy, 16 (2004), 35-54.

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• Trade, Wages and Labour Mobility.

(with Sugata Marjit), in Aditya Bhattacharjea and Sugata Marjit (eds.) Globalization and the Developing Economies; (2004), Manohar Books, New Delhi, India.

• Informal Sector in General Equilibrium: Welfare Effects of Trade Policy Reforms. (with Sugata Marjit), International Review of Economics and Finance, 10 (2001), 289-300.

• Gradual Trade Reform and the Current Account - The Role of Intermediate Goods. (with Sugata Marjit), Keio Economic Studies, XXXVII (1), 2000, 63-69.

• Financial Volatility and Convertibility- Some Methodological Issues. (with Sugata Marjit), Economic and Political Weekly, XXXIII (8), 1998, 401-406.

• Capital Mobility and Informal Wage in a Small Economy--Two Examples (with Sugata Marjit), forthcoming, South Asia Economic Journal (Vol. 5, no 2).

Submissions and Conference Presentations:

• Economic Reform, Skill Formation and Foreign Capital (with Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis) submitted for publication.

• Asymmetric Information, Immigrant Labor and Self-Employment in a Rich Country- A Survey, submitted for publication.

• Asymmetric Information, International Migration of Labor and Self-Employment of Skilled Immigrants and Natives (with Eliakim Katz, working paper, NIU, presented at the Indian Statistical Institute Conference on Methods and Models in Economics, March, 2003).

• Trade Reform, Capital Mobility and Informal Wage- Theory and Evidence (with Sugata Marjit, Occasional Paper, CSSSC; submitted for publication, presented at Sharing Global Prosperity conference at WIDER, Helsinki, 5-7 September, 2003; Global Development Award Finalist in the 5th GDN Conference held in New Delhi during 28-30 Jan. 2004).

• Agricultural Trade Reform - A General Equilibrium Explanation for Developed Countries. (with Sugata Marjit and Hamid Beladi), submitted for publication.

• Wage Determination of Child Labor and Effect of Trade Reform (with Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis), presented at Sharing Global Prosperity conference presentation at WIDER, Helsinki, 5-7 September, 2003).

• Capital Mobility and Informal Wage in a Small Economy--Two Examples (with Sugata Marjit), submitted for publication.

• Pro-Market Reform and Informal wage –Theory and Contemporary Indian Perspective (with Sugata Marjit), submitted for publication.

• Trade Reform and Informal Labor – A Formal-Informal Characterization of the Heckscher-Ohlin Framework, (with Sugata Marjit and Hamid Beladi) – submitted for publication.

• Emigration and Wage Inequality (with Sugata Marjit) – submitted for publication. • Entrepreneurial Culture, Occupational Choice and Tax Policy - A Theoretical

Note. (with V. Mukherjee, submitted for publication).

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Projects Undertaken

• Economic Reform and Poverty: The Indian Experience – Paper presented at 5th Annual GDN Conference held in New Delhi, 28-30 January, 2004. Project by WIDER, UNU, Helsinki. Final report submitted in May 2004.

• Working on project entitled, ‘Globalization, Income Inequality and Regional Disparity – Analyzing the Indian Experience in the 1990s’, under SANEI VI, First Draft to presented, final report due March, 2005.

• Completed Project on “Trade Potentials of South Asian Economies Under the New Global Trade Regime: The Role of Some Non-Price Factors – A Case Study of India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka”, 2002-2003. Presented Final report at SANEI V Conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka, 15-18 august, 2003.

• Completed EX-IM Bank of India project on "Transactions Costs of Indian Exports", 1998.

• Recipient of GDN (Global Development Network, Washington D.C.) project on Trade Liberalization, Migration and Poverty under Macroeconomic Policy Challenges for Low-Income Countries. Final Report submitted, November 2004.

Editorial Referee

• Review of Development Economics.

Visiting Positions

• Sabbatical Fellow at WIDER, UNU, Helsinki, May-July, 2004.

Computer Skills • Comprehensive knowledge of Econometrics software packages, including

SAS, LIMDEP, STATA, SPSS. • Thorough knowledge of MAPLE 5.0, Scientific Word, MS Office.

Contact Information: Dr. Saibal Kar Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. R-1 B.P. Township, Kolkata 700 094, India. Ph. 91-33-2462 5794/95/7252. Fax: 91-33-2462 6183. E-mail: skar1801@yahoo.com

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Name: Rituparna Bhattacharya Date of birth: 10th August 1980 Sex: Female Citizenship: Indian Residential address: Shishumahal, P.O.: Daulatpur, Kolkata: 700139 Telephone number (res.): 2490 3487, 3096 0964 E-mail ID: bhattacharya_rituparna@yahoo.co.in Present Occupation: Research Assistant in Centre for Studies in Social

Sciences, Calcutta, under the RBI Endowment Scheme, (June, 2004 –).

Address of the employer: CSSSC, R-1, B.P. Township, Kolkata - 700094

Education:

Year Degree Awarding Authority Institution Grade

1996 Madhyamik WB Board of Secondary Education

Akra Saktigarh Rabindra Vidyapith 82.33% (Ist Div.)

1998 Higher Secondary WB Council of Higher Secondary Education

Sivanath Sastri College 80.1% (Ist Div.)

2001 B. A. (Hons) in Economics Jadavpur University Jadavpur University 65.2% (Ist

Class)

2003 M. A. in Economics Jadavpur University Jadavpur University 67.44% (Ist class)

Project Experiences:

Period Name of the Project Institute Job Description

August, 1999 to

April, 2001

Socio-Economic Survey on “Health &

Education”

Economics Department, Jadavpur

University.

Ist part - Household survey: Revealing the responsiveness of the mass across income groups towards private and public health care services 2nd part - Data analysis – using economic and statistical tools 3rd part - Complete report preparing

December 2001 to

December 2002

Child Relief and You

(Voluntary service)

Working on the base line data, preparing detail reports of surveys, data interpretation

November, 2002 to

January, 2003

“Gender Ethics & Women’s Studies

Education”

Applied Ethics Institute of India.

Survey based project on women awareness towards women rights and other gender responsive issues coming across women life cycle

September 2003 to

January 2004

“Disaster Management: Floods in West Bengal

and Early Warning System”

Centre for environmental

Management and Participatory Development

Analyzing flood history of West Bengal – focusing at various socio-eco-political issues in the light of disaster mitigation

February 2004 to May 2004

Groundwater markets in West Bengal, India:

emergence, evolution and market structure

Center for Studies in Social Sciences,

Calcutta

Analyzing the data collected on 5 major districts of West Bengal – extensive use of econometric and economic tools (mainly the Latent Variable models) and software packages (LIMDEP)

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System experience & proficiency:

Operating System: Windows. Applications: MS-Word, MS-Excel, Photoshop, PageMaker,

I-Leap, Corel.

Econometrics Packages: Micro fit, LIMDEP, SPSS.

Communications: Bengali, English, Hindi

Areas of Specialization:

• Econometrics and optimization technique. • Environment and resource management.

Awards: Second rank in M.A. (Economics). Third Rank in B.A. (Economics Hons.). National Scholarship Award in the year 1994. National Scholarship Award in the year 1992.