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Role of Trade and Macroeconomic Policies in the Performance of Special Economic Zones (SEZs)
Get PDFSpecial economic zones following the enormous success of China have been widely imitated. But it is to be entirely anticipated that the results would vary greatly. Earlier avatars of SEZs in the form of Foreign Trade Zones (FTZs) and Export Promotion Zones (EPZs) were important in the export led growth of east Asia especially South Korea. But more than SEZs or EPZs per se it is the pursuit of “export led growth policies” which underlie the success of exporting and hence of SEZs. SEZz / EPZs can be seen as a (not necessary) microeconomic and spatial initiative in the pursuit of ELG under rather special circumstances by China, and South Korea and Taiwan to more limited extent in their early phases of transformation. In other countries not pursuing ELG the success of SEZs/EPZs has been rather modest. The roles played by the SEZs/ EPZs etc whatever their original purpose were constrained and determined by the macroeconomic policies, trade policies, and regional alignments. There is little meaning in studying SEZs beyond their layout and design without reference to these broader trade and macroeconomic policies. Thus early pioneers like India could make little out of their EPZs since the policies are severely biased against exports. We characterise export led growth (ELG) as the strategy that has allowed the late twentieth century industrialisations, which is far from both import substitution (as conventionally understood) and laissez faire, and to be the simultaneous pursuit of both IS and EP. With this framework we are able to understand the role and evolution of SEZs in a wide variety of countries. These help us to explain and anticipate that unless the policy turns sharply to favour exports (more correctly tradables over non tradables) the success of Indian SEZs would be modest and nowhere near that registered in China. Following from our characterisation of Import Substitution, Export Led Growth and Laissez Faire we also bring out the nature and performance of “special zones” when these are promoted under the very same regimes.
Real-time electrostatic charge monitoring of the wear surfaces and debris generated by sliding bearing steel contacts
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The Question of Land and Infrastructure Development in India: Urgently Required Reforms for Fairness and Infrastructural Development
Get PDFLand in India is problematic largely because of archaic and perverse provisions in the practice and the law. The new Land Acquisition Amendment Bill does go some way to correct the anti-democratic and imperial provisions of the old 1894 Act. Other regulatory restraints stand in the way of fair compensation to sellers whether the deal is a sale or an acquisition using eminent domain. Urban planning being based on the “Ricardian Model” and on top of asymmetrically applied regulatory constraints further depresses the benefit to land owners. As a result very little land is obtainable without dispute and high risk for infrastructure development. In this paper we provide an analytical critique of the law and restrictions as also of the framework of urban planning and provide a justification for why major change is required in the approach to land markets, land acquisition and urban planning. We also provide the key elements of a reformed approach that can create a win-win framework for development. We also present our suggestions on how the proposed Amendment to the Land Acquisition Act can be changed to make the Act functional and remove the residual perversities therein.
Comments on the Draft Electricity Bill 2001
Get PDFThese comments on the Draft Bill 2001, had been widely circulated in September 2001. Discussions on the Bill have again revived in the media and elsewhere, as the reform of the power sector has made little headway, and there is much concern that something needs to be done. Little progress or changes have been made in the Bill, so that most of the comments made then remain valid. Essentially the Bill is maimed because it is not clear enough, does not lay a path for reform and for the evolution of the sector, and in no way reduces the policy and regulatory uncertainties. While it attempts to bring about open access, that objective would not be realised since cross subsidies are to be loaded on to the transmission charge thereby killing whatever little prospect there is the Bill for a market in power. There is no specification at all of the mode of transmission pricing and the crucial role of transmission pricing is not recognised in the Bill. The Bill does not recognise that cross-subsidies via differential prices would continue to keep open the "price-arbitrage" opportunity (the root of corruption and the source of all ills in the system), so that no real change would be possible. The Bill gives legal status to far too many "authorities" and bodies, some of them quite unnecessary and vestiges of the past. The coordination problems between these are likely to take the system (if ever what is envisaged materialises) far from the optimal. The special opportunity in inter-regional trade in power cannot be realised unless the law limits the barriers to interregional trade. Most importantly the Bill virtually rules out incentive regulation of the modern varieties such as price cap regulation. Through the sub-clauses it brings in cost plus regulation. Cost plus regulation has been particularly problematic in India, and can be expected to bring inefficiencies and cost padding if not regulatory capture.
Agriculture: A Perspective from History, the Metrics of Comparative Advantage, and Limitations of the Market to Understand the Role of State in a Globalising World
Get PDFMultilateral agencies and economists with much influence have been urging laissez-faire in agriculture. While success with the rich countries has been minimal despite the commitments under the WTO, many poor countries with much agricultural potential in the long run have been coaxed to adopt near free trade in agriculture with disastrous results especially for the poor in these economies. There are fundamental problems in achieving even global (leave aside optimum for any particular country) optimality through world trade in agriculture given the immovability of land. Additionally the fact that poor countries start their transformation process with much of their population engaged in agriculture imposes special requirements upon agriculture. Incomes have to rise in agriculture to overcome poverty and to constitute rising domestic demand for modern manufactures and therefore the infant industry argument holds with additional force. We bring together the historical experience of agricultural development, the relationship between economic development and agriculture, trade in agriculture, the role of state action especially in the late industrialisation context. The differences between land endowed and land poor countries are recognised in their analyses. We develop a perspective on the comparative advantage of nations in agriculture and the evolution of the same. The metrics of agriculture and trade, arising out of the dynamics of the share of agriculture in GDP, the dependence of agriculture on land endowments, the biological limits to consumption of agricultural products, underlie a dynamic structural model of the revealed comparative advantage which is developed and tested using panel data from about 100 countries. The nature of agricultural products on several dimensions – its long lead in production, its perishability in some cases, its storability in others, but above all the grouping of many agricultural products into low price and income elasticity of demand – is used. The purpose is to draw insights that can usefully inform the content of state intervention, and trade policy especially from the point of view of a country like India which is likely to lose its comparative advantage in many agricultural products as incomes rise. The comparative advantage of countries in agriculture is most usefully characterized as rising of the arable land endowments per person and declining as the per capita income rises relative to the worlds “average” per capita income. A structural model on the lines above is estimated empirically. The Model is also dynamic since the rise in per capita incomes at a faster rate in transforming countries can be used as data to predict with a high degree of reliability that they would see a decline in their competitiveness. Similarly countries with low arable land per person would see a rapid fall in their competitiveness. Yet land abundance in poor countries does not automatically result in high competitiveness. [The abundance of easily mined other natural resources like fuels acting through the balance of payments could lower greatly the revealed competitiveness of agriculture]. To realize the same, much land has to be brought under the plough and enhanced, a task where the role of the state is important. Irrigation development as also the use of machinery on land enhances the competitiveness of agriculture. And the former is dependent much upon the ability of the state to put together public irrigation and support private irrigation. Even more importantly the investments in storage, market support, transportation, information provision, demonstration of new technologies and extension all of which are required at the beginning of the agricultural transformation require active intervention of the state. The problem for the poor countries with land abundance is compounded by the large distortion of international prices resulting from subsidization by rich countries as they face declining competitiveness in agriculture due to very high incomes. The coaxing of land rich poor countries in this situation to embrace laissez faire policies by the multilateral agencies is shameful and nothing short of suicide for these countries. The costs of subsidization in the rich countries are very small and the political benefits very large, so a roll back of subsidization is least likely. Agriculture is the first industry where surpluses can arise to stoke development as such. The historical evidence that no country of substantial size has been able to industrialize without a prior or simultaneous agricultural revolution has to be noted. And the infant industry argument is valid for agriculture as much as for industry. Both these further condemn the laissez faire position. Protection of agriculture is therefore the least distortionary way for the “large” land-poor poor countries as they advance to protect their employment. Protection alone without active support of the state to overcome the significant market distortions in agriculture and its inputs may not be enough. Protection in land scarce economies ought to be scaled down only as such economies are able to absorb labour shed by an advancing agriculture in other segments of the economy. Functionality also demands that the role of the state in agriculture and subsidization recognizes not only the market failures arising out of the public good nature of many inputs, but also the perversities that low price and income elasticities, when combined with the long “lead” can bring to the functioning of markets. Similarly the structure of the value chain from production to final consumption in distant lands – especially the fact that the aggregators and processors in the value chain would be able to capture rents – creates the basis for a crucial role for the state in trading, stocking and processing. Shortages and variations in output again create the need for buffer stocking. Successful late agricultural transformations have been built upon the state playing these roles. The state’s role in processing while crucial has not generally been successfully realised, the complexity of the tasks being a basic bottleneck. Laissez faire policies in agriculture when without reference to the stage of development, and state failure to compensate for the market perversities underlie the disaster that agriculture has been for poor countries with much agricultural potential.
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Societal Change, States and Governance: Insights from History and other Societies
Get PDFThe nature of governance has differed widely across societies, and what is more interesting, within any particular society depending upon the stage of development. Governance is better defined in functional rather than in value terms. Functional governance aids and abetts industrialisation. Industrialisation is the one change that all societies have to necessarily strive for. Without it no development is possible In contemporary societies which are also democratic and trying hard to industrialise, that insight needs to be tempered with the limitations of the state that is a coalition of many classes. More importantly just because functional governance was not the good governance of today, in many countries and societies in the past, does not mean, that it today cannot be both good and functional. The point though is that unless it is functional it can never be good. Functionality of governance is best assured when the policies followed by the state in its drive to industrialise the economy are correct. Therefore the main lesson from history is that the first thing to do (for both functional governance and for the industrial transformation) is to bring about the initial conditions necessary for the industrialisation of the economy. The key bottleneck here is tenurial relations in land which stand in the way of output increases from the poor farmer. The egalitarian income distribution that land reform brings, ensures that nearly all the poor are particpants in the market. All other conditions necessary for the unambigous transformation already obtain today in India. We also describe the process of change and the sense in which the economic is primary to societal change. That does not mean that there is no scope for individual or collective action. It only means that there are particular ways in which individuals and small groups including reformers can bring about change. It is important to recognise the specific ways in which small groups including elements with government can bring about change. In any discussion of corruption and governance the case of China which despite being highly corrupt society grows can hardly be avoided. Corruption there is the means by which a bourgeois society is being born in China today. Because much of the rents are invested there is no dysfunctionality to this corruption. It would though soon become dysfunctional, since, once the party elite have all become capitalists, the gain to them and to society as a whole is greater in a non-corrupt society. That is already happening, and corruption can be expected to decline soon.
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