Kirjahaku

Arguments for protection and against free trade have seen a revival in developed countries such as the United States and Great Britain as well as developing countries such as India. Given the clear benefits trade openness has brought everywhere, this is a surprising development. The benefits of free trade are especially great for emerging market economies. FreeTrade and Prosperityoffers the first full-scale defense of pro-free-trade policies with developing countries at its center. Arvind Panagariya, a professor at Columbia University and former top economic advisor to the government of India, supplies a historically informed analysis of many longstanding but flawed arguments for protection. He starts with an insightful overview of the positive case for free trade, and then closely examines the various contentions of protectionists. One protectionist argument is that "infant" industries need time to grow and become competitive, and thus should be sheltered. Other arguments are that emerging markets are especially prone to coordination failures, they are in need of diversification of their production structures, and they suffer from market imperfections. The panoply of protectionist arguments, including those for import substitution industrialization, fails when subject to close logical and empirical scrutiny. Free trade and outward-oriented policies are preconditions to both sustained rapid growth and poverty alleviation in developing countries. Panagariya provides compelling evidence demonstrating the failures of protectionism and the promise of free trade using detailed case studies of successful countries such as Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, China and India. Low or declining barriers to free trade and high or rising shares of trade in total income have been key elements in the sustained rapid growth and poverty alleviation in these countries and many others. Free trade is like oxygen: the benefits are ubiquitous and not noticed until they are no longer there. This important book is an essential reminder of the costs of protectionism.

With a GDP that just reached $2.6 trillion, India is poised to become the world's third largest economy in less than a decade. In doing so, it will have moved one step closer to reclaiming its pre-industrial glory when it accounted for one-sixth of the global output and ranked second in economic size. This rapid movement in the absolute size of the economy will be insufficient, however, to bring prosperity to India's vast population. Today, 44% of the country's workforce remains in agriculture and another 42% in small enterprises with fewer than twenty workers. Labor productivity of both sets of workers remains low and they live overwhelmingly on subsistence-level incomes. In New India: Reclaiming the Lost Glory, Arvind Panagariya outlines a concise strategy to transform India from a primarily rural and agricultural economy to an urban and industrial economy with well-paid jobs for those with limited skills. Panagariya argues that the creation of good jobs requires the emergence of medium and large enterprises in industry and services, especially labor-intensive sectors such as apparel, footwear, and other light manufactures. He explains that India needs policies conducive to the growth of firms from small to medium, medium to large, and large to larger still. Such policies include greater outward orientation; more flexible land, labor, and capital markets; concerted effort to improve the quality of higher education; faster urbanization; and improved governance at all levels. Written by a preeminent authority on the Indian economy, New India: Reclaiming the Lost Glory provides a data-driven and persuasive roadmap for India to eliminate abject poverty, accelerate economic growth, and return to its historically prominent position in the global economy.

India's economic model underwent transformational change following independence in 1947. The country's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, embarked upon two foundational projects to build modern India: a political project aimed at establishing democracy with universal suffrage, and an economic one aimed at ending poverty. Three-quarters of a century later, his political project is a resounding success, but the opposite is true of the economic one. The Nehru-Era Economic History and Thought & Their Lasting Impact examines the evolution of Nehru's economic philosophy with socialism, self-sufficiency, and heavy-industry development at its core. Through extensive archival research, Arvind Panagariya reconstructs and reinterprets this history, paying particular attention to the administrative processes deployed to implement policies, contemporary economic thought, and important historical events not adequately covered in the existing literature. He assesses the evolution of Nehru's own political beliefs and the construction of the Nehru development model, the resulting regime and exclusionary nature of economic growth, and the lasting intellectual legacy of the Nehru-era socialism on politicians, civil servants, policy analysts, and businesspeople in the six decades since Nehru's death. This book is the fascinating tale of a model with the near-unanimous approval of experts from all around the world at its inception and the impact of its failure.

The signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and recent expansions of the European Union have led to renewed efforts to create preferential trade areas (PTAs) around the world including Asia, Africa and Latin America. Because PTAs liberalize trade with union members but not the rest of the world, they are not necessarily a healthy development. By dividing the world into trade blocs, they also threaten to undermine the multilateral trading system.This collection of recently published essays by a leading critic of regionalism offers an assessment of the economic impact of PTAs on member countries and the world. The first set of essays present a theoretical analysis of the issues using simple economic models, and study the relationship between regionalism and multilateralism. Subsequent essays evaluate the role of PTAs in Asia, North America and Latin America. The general theme of the book is that, on balance, trade liberalization through PTAs is a mistake. Trade diversion, and the creation of complicated and discriminatory tariff regimes with increased tariffs for non-member countries — the consequences of PTAs — are likely to undermine the multilateral trading system.The book will be useful to academics as well as policy makers and policy analysts. Many of the essays have been featured in newspapers and journals such as the Financial Times, Economist, Journal of Commerce and International Herald Tribune. Some of these essays are already on many reading lists in the United States.