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The purpose of this paper is to ground in serious empirical evidence the debate on whether the post-reform acceleration in growth has helped bring poverty down for all economic, social and religious groups and in all state or has left certain groups or states.

The paper uses unit-level data from the so-called thick rounds of expenditure surveys by National Sample Survey (NSS) in the years 1993-1994, 2004-2005, 2009-2010 and 2011-2012 and estimates the proportion of the population below the official Tendulkar line. Adequate care is taken to address the issue of sample size in reporting the estimates.

Whether we slice the data by social, religious or economic groups, by states or by rural and urban areas, poverty has significantly declined between 1993-1994 and 2011-2012 with a substantial acceleration during the faster-growth period from 2004-2005 to 2011-2012. Poverty rates among the disadvantaged social groups and minorities have declined faster so that the gap in poverty rates between them and the general population has declined. In 7 of the 16 states with large Muslim populations, the poverty rate for them is now below that for the Hindus.

Use of survey data has its limitations, especially when the sample sizes are small. The paper also does not assess the direct contribution of growth in relation to that through redistribution.

The paper presents implications for identification of the poor for the purpose of designing targeted interventions.

This is the first paper to offer up-to-date estimates of poverty by social, religious and economic groups, by states and by rural and urban areas.

India is one of the world's largest exporters of products and services. Given the outstanding contribution of services in India's foreign trade, this study examines the changing international trade pattern for India. It is a nation that is heavily dependent on imports and exports. This study examines the changing international trade pattern for India with the existence of certain global disruptions. The analysis highlights a growing trade surplus in services and an increasing trade deficit (i.e. imports higher than exports) in goods. India needs to have policies in place to emerge as a strong economy in this post-pandemic era. This chapter provides a set of examples based on the research findings. The research suggests that the growing economy and supportive government policies offer greater opportunities for the country in the longer period if urgent policy initiatives and support are extended to existing and potential manufacturing and services sectors. It ultimately seeks to highlight key opportunities, challenges and suggestions to protect and promote India's international trade.

In this study, the authors aim to analyze India's trade performance from the period of liberalization until the recent financial crisis, and compare it to China's.

The authors then examine Indian trade and investment policy and also institutional factors that potentially determine these trade patterns and performance, especially where they differ from China's.

Finally, the authors highlight future trade policy challenges for India and also provide suggestions to ensure strong growth in trade and integration with the global market.

This paper contributes by performing a comparative analysis of the Indian and Chinese experiences under trade liberalization and also by outlining potential challenges for Indian trade policy in the future.

During the 1950‐1979 period, the governments of Central America often pursued “cheap‐food” policies. A general‐equilibrium model is employed to show how these policies contributed to the resource‐allocation patterns observed in the region during this period. The model also shows how cheap‐food policies contributed to the observed shift in the functional distribution of income from wages to rents and profits. An empirical test verifies the contribution of bean‐pricing policy to the shift in land resources away from food crops in Costa Rica, and the causes behind the relaxation of cheap‐food policies in the 1980s are discussed.

The economic success of East Asia was due to an export-led growth strategy, which was heavily dependent on the global trading system underpinned by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). In recent years, however; East Asian countries have shifted their trade policy focus to regional agreements and made Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) among themselves arid with other regions. Government organization has been restructured to increase FTA activities. Generally, the current literature predicts that FTA activities of East Asia would help to increase the welfare of the region. In this paper; we offer a critical assessment of East Asia FTAs. We note that East Asia FTAs provide incomplete coverage of sectors and are likely to lead to an inefficient resource allocation. FTA movements are not matched with actual trade flows. The benefits of East Asia FTAs are fairly limited and potential benefits, if any, would not likely be materialized in the near future. Our overall assessment is that the recent policy shift in East Asian countries from multilateral trade orientation or unilateral action to regionalism or a parallel multilateral and regional trade approach will not produce much gain. The governments should increase their efforts at economic reform and reduce barriers to trade and investment, rather than to allocate more resource and manpower to FTA activities.

The earliest arguments as the leaders of the newly independent developing countries began to plan for accelerated growth and resulting reduction of poverty – what I have called the progressive and activist ‘pull up’ strategy for reducing poverty, in contrast to the conservative characterization of it as a passive ‘trickle down strategy’ suggesting that the Earl of Nottingham and his vassals are eating leg of lamb and venison at a high table, with crumbs falling to the dogs and serfs below – involved answering a basic economic-philosophical question: How would integration into the world economy on dimensions such as trade, equity investment (i.e. multinationals), migration and technology (e.g. intellectual property protection) work? Would, as the opponents argued, integration into the world economy on these different dimensions lead to disintegration of the national economy; or would it help instead?