Biswajit Nag

A Study of Open Innovation in Telecommunication Services: A Review of Literature & Trends

This paper examines the trends, the research and studies done globally on open innovation and open business models in the field of Telecommunication Services. These include value added services pertaining to communications, online, web and media, mobile, triple/quad play, etc. on both consumer and enterprise side. In the face of severe competition, and commoditization, the current traditional Telco business models and services like Voice and Broadband are losing value rapidly causing the ARPUs of Telcos to drop, leading to a crisis in the Telecom industry. New business models based on Open Innovation & Open Business Models can help the Telcos survive and thrive through transformation

Welfare Implication of India-ASEAN FTA: An Analysis Using GTAP Model

The welfare effect under GTAP model computes a money metric equivalent of the utility change. This is calculated by measuring ‘equivalent variation’ (EV) which summarizes the regional welfare changes resulting from any policy shock and is given in dollar values (US

Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement between India and Sri Lanka: Where Does it Lead?

million). In GTAP, this money metric change is broken into different components, each of which relates to a quantity change interacting with a distortion in the model. Considering the welfare decomposition effect under multiple regions as proposed by Huff & Hurtel (2001), the current study gives an insight into the sources of welfare gain under various simulations describing stages of India-ASEAN FTA. ASEAN is so far the biggest bloc with which India has an operational FTA. Almost 9% of India’s trade is with ASEAN as a group. In thiscontext, the paper makes an attempt to assess the welfare implication of this agreement considering various implementation stages.It has been noticed that relatively bigger ASEAN members will derive more benefits in terms of welfare growth. India will have higher benefits only when the agreement gets fully implemented. ASEAN members will gain from higher ‘terms of trade’ effect while India’s gain mainly will be from the resource reallocation and change in domestic production activities reflected through ‘allocative efficiency’. However, the overall gain gets dampened due to the presence of negative ‘terms of trade’ in India’s welfare equation. India’s import demand of several intermediate as well as final goods will remain high and ASEAN will have advantage to supply these at a higher price yet lower than average prevailing import price in India which will lead to negative ‘terms of trade’ effect for India. The value of ‘allocative efficiency’ for India increases significantly once there is full liberalization. With full liberalization India extends tariff concessions for large number of products which are otherwise included in its negative list and not allowed any concessions. This adds to allocative efficiency- firstly due to removal of protection from several inefficient production processes and second due to increased import taxes contributed by increased imports of many of the products otherwise featuring in the country’s negative list.Once we incorporate imperfect competition and presence of increasing return to scale in selected sectors in India, ‘scale economy’ effect, ‘profit shifting’, and various tax contributions will lead to more welfare gain in India. This indicates that with the presence of imperfect competition, profit shifting will allow India to invest in capital goods and technology leading to high ‘scale effect’ and thereby to increase exports further to ASEAN. The study brings up a very crucial issue that the gain from FTA with ASEAN hinges on India’s big firm’s ability to reduce average cost bringing better technology and quality inputs. This will improve production system in India which in turn will further boost the export sector.

Analysing India.s Trade Dynamics vis-É-vis SAARC Members Using the Gravity Model

India-Sri Lanka signed free trade agreement (FTA) in 1998. Looking at the success of the agreement both the countries engaged themselves in negotiating a ‘Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement’ (CEPA), which include trade, investment, and technology transfer etc. The CEPA negotiation was initiated in 2005 and concluded in July 2008, after thirteen rounds of negotiations. CEPA comprise of four objectives; widening and deepening of the existing FTA, establishing an agreement on trade in services, including measures for promotion of investment in each others countries and enhancing economic cooperation. Both sides had decided to sign the CEPA during the 15th SAARC Summit held in Colombo but due to reservations expressed by Government of Sri Lanka, the agreement has still not been signed. Reservations were based on two broad concerns: about the nature of the CEPA itself and that the drawbacks in the FTA should be dealt with first, prior to embarking on a CEPA. It is important to note that CEPA has made attempts to address both the issues. The paper analyses the positive and negative views about the current trade dynamics between these two countries and their possible implication in post CEPA period. The article also analyses various clauses imbibed in the agreement for services and investment issues.

Asian Integration Process and BIMSTEC

The presence of Regional Trading Arrangements in today’s multilateral trade has become a common feature. India in its efforts to embrace this phenomenon became an important constituent of SAARC. South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA), the new regime under the SAARC umbrella is to be implemented from 2006 onwards. In this recent initiative, the members agreed that South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement (SAPTA) would begin the transformation into SAFTA by the beginning of 2006, with full implementation completed between 2009 and 2013. Given this recent occurrence this paper attempts to explore India’s trade dynamics in the SAARC region using the gravity model. In other words, the paper uses the ‘natural trading partners’ hypothesis as the empirical basis to assess the potential success of a South Asian trading bloc. The article emphasizes that more concrete integration among SAARC members is essential for it to be successful. An important observation of the paper is that in spite of an increasing trade complementarity between SAARC members, the members can be identified only moderately as natural trading partners. This validates the scope of the simmering trade potentiality of SAFTA, which has to be nurtured carefully to make it a reality.

Auto-component industry in Asia: structure, trade patterns and potential for further upgrading

Regional cooperation is a stepping stone for economic integration within a geographic region. It may be market-driven integration without any explicit agreement implying that private sector is actively engaged in bringing convergence among the economies. Economic integration may also be pursued through cooperation agreements among the countries of the region which are mainly policy induced integration. Many regions across the world are engaged in comprehensive economic partnership agreements. This paper brings out the characteristics of BIMSTEC and argues that the BIMSTEC focus area has strong impact on the Asian way of integration.

SAARC Geopolitics and Trade: Missing Intra-regional Connectivity a Hindrance to Further Economic Integration

During the second half of the 1990s, the globalisation of the automotive industry has greatly accelerated. Asian economies are the latest production destinations as well as consumption centres. These countries are also major exporters of automobiles and auto components. Due to structural change in the automobile industry, the ancillary sector is morphing into system sub-suppliers and component manufacturers. They are now sharing risks significantly along with the original equipment manufacturers. Component sectors in many Asian countries are increasingly less protected and competition is now intense. At this juncture, the paper analyses the growth and trade dynamics of automotive sector in some Asian countries focusing on the industrial structure and the layers of the value chain. The paper studies the trade pattern of automobile and component industry and discusses the flow of intra-Asian trade in components and its nuances. It also has made an attempt to explore the role of regional trade liberalisation in enhancing the trade of auto-components.

Assessing the Future of Trade in the Automobile Sector Between India and Pakistan: Implications of Abolishing the Negative List

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) region is bestowed with geographical, historical and cultural continuity and yet it remains one of the least integrated regions of the world. This article attempts to analyse the factors inhibiting the economic integration of the region. The intra-SAARC trade is analysed in view of the existence of a free trade agreement between the member nations. The socio-development, infrastructural and economic indicators of the nations are also compared. The reasons for the existence of mistrust and hostility between the SAARC countries are discussed, from India’s evident dominant position in the group as a cause for insecurity among other members to the political standoffs between the member nations. While there exists immense potential for greater economic integration and gains from trade, the lack of basic transport-transit connectivity, technical harmonisation and non-tariff barriers are found to reinforce trade costs and inhibit legal trade. Ensuring better connectivity is recognised as a prerequisite by the nations unanimously; however, their political differences have kept them away from making much headway in this regard.

Myanmar–India Trade: An Empirical Study on Possible Employment Benefits for the State of Mizoram

This paper makes an attempt to understand the implications of trade normalisation between India and Pakistan on the automobile sector. Currently, a majority of auto components are in Pakistan’s negative list. Based on both quantitative and qualitative analyses, the paper concludes that India will compete mostly with South-East Asian countries in the Pakistani market, Indian exports will substitute imports from Japan, Thailand and China, and Indian products may not have a significant impact on Pakistan’s domestic automobile industry. Besides, opening up trade can create an opportunity for the development of cross-border production networks in this sector. This has the potential to provide a major price benefit to Pakistani consumers who will gain substantially from the introduction of new and better models. The paper also identifies the products on which the impact of removal of the negative list is expected to be minimal. In these products, either Pakistan is a small importer from the world or India is not a large exporter to the world, or both. In many other products, Pakistan has been experiencing declining import growth or their share in total import is less than 1 %. The threat perception in these products seems to be relatively low. The analysis of India’s Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) index for automobile products also reflects that India is yet to become competitive in a large number of automobile products and hence, Pakistan does not have an immediate threat in such products. However, there are critical components and vehicle parts in which Pakistan is already a large importer and India will compete with other Asian players in these segments.

Is Indian automobile industry getting integrated with Asian production network

Myanmar and India aim to increase the trade and investment between the two neighbouring countries by way of improved road transportation and banking arrangements. The official trade between India and Myanmar through Mizoram’s Zokhawthar Border Crossing Point (Indian side) is almost negligible. However, it is generally known that consumer goods including electronic gadgets from Myanmar, China, South Korea and Malaysia come to India informally and goods such as such as LPG cylinders, medicines, mosquito repellents, fertilizers and pesticides, motorcycles & bicycle parts, baby food, smartphones and solar power appliances go out of India. Any improvement in trade facilitation is therefore expected to boost the formal trade significantly. Meanwhile, several efforts are being taken including multi-modal transportation to improve the trade efficiency. The current study based on field survey has assessed the benefit of increased trade in Mizoram. The landlocked nature, geographical position and topography of Mizoram State of India can only support the development of MSME clusters rather than any large industries. Opening up international trade routes can thus contribute to the development of the value chain in areas such as horticulture, food processing and lightweight farm equipment. The study has also investigated how far the effort of Mizoram government in developing human capital is in sync with the prospective trade driven growth in the state.