Suresh D. Tendulkar

Determinants of Firm-level Export Performance: A Case Study of Indian Textile Garments and Apparel Industry

Drawing on international trade and industrial organisation theories, this paper identifies variables affecting (a) the export decision function, i.e. to export or sell in domestic market, and (b) the export performance function, i.e. the share of exports in output. These functions are estimated for Garment and Apparel producing units in Delhi. The form of business organisation, reflecting access to capital, turns out to be a key determinant in both functions. The estimated marginal impact of identified variables (scale and share of sales expenses) on the probability of exporting in an estimated Probit model declines sharply when moving from single proprietorship to partnership and on to limited companies. On the other hand, every single determinant (scale, share of wages, share of sales expenses and technical efficiency) has been found to have an increasing marginal impact on export performance in an estimated Tobit model when moving across the three forms of business organisation. Empirical results suggest two policy changes to boost export performance. First, given the importance of scale for exports, the existing policy of reserving garments and apparel for exclusive production in small-scale units needs to be scrapped. Simultaneously, it is also necessary to amend current labour legislation applicable to large-scale factory units, as it introduces labour market inflexibility and hence serves as an impediment to the expansion of existing units and the entry of new units.

On a relationship between the real and the nominal relative disparities in the consumption of cereals in rural India

Abstract This paper deduces the analytical conditions for the movements in the same or in the opposite direction of the real and the nominal relative disparity in cereal consumption consequent upon the differential movements in the prices of cereals faced by the bottom and the top fractile groups of the population. These conditions are used for interpreting the movements in the real and the nominal relative disparity with reference to the Indian rural population over the period from 1953 to 1978.

The Dynamics of Total Consumption and Saving

In Houthakker and Taylor [3], certain variants of the dynamic stock-flow model developed for forecasting individual items of consumption expenditure were applied also to total consumption and saving. After the results had gone to press, a drastic revision of the basic data was published by the United States Department of Commerce in the August 1965 Survey of Current Business. According to the revised data, the personal savings ratio is much lower than it appeared to be and has had a downward trend in recent years. Since the earlier research gave a good explanation of the old data, the question arises whether the equations used can also account for the rather surprising new picture of savings. This paper reports on new calculations to assess the changes in the estimates of the structural parameters as a result of the revision. It also seeks to examine the population effect (the aggregate model as compared to the per capita model) and the effect of disposable income components on savings (in particular different saving propensities of labor and non-labor income-earners). The analysis proceeds both on the annual and the quarterly level. The basic demand function is formulated in continuous time and theoretically implies certain relations between the annual and the quarterly estimates; if these relations are satisfied, the underlying theory receives support.