The classical Wage Fund (Capital or Credit) framework is integrated with the simplest text-book version of the Ricardian model of comparative advantage, generating a model that replicates important features of the neo-classical production theory involving capital and labour without neo-classical...

This paper revisits the relationship between international trade and economic growth. We measure trade openness indices separately with respect to intermediate inputs and final goods and find that it is the former which turns out to be significant in explaining growth gains from trade. Using...

We examine the impact of economic deregulation on employer evasion of union-mandated "formal" wage-contracts in an import-competing industry. We show that, if the state maintains industrial employment despite import liberalisation, through cheaper credit to firms, then employer evasion will...

The path breaking work of Card and Krueger (1993), showing higher minimum wage can increase employment turned the age-old conventional wisdom on its head. This paper demonstrates that this apparently paradoxical result is perfectly plausible in a competitive general equilibrium production...

India embarked on a path of liberal economic reform in the 1990s after years of nurturing an intensively regulated and controlled economic environment that was loosened slightly in the mid-1980s. The most important and critical segments of this reform were trade and foreign investment. India has...

The concept of factor intensity has played a key role in the development of international trade theory. The factor proportions utilized in the production of commodities differ from activity to activity. Some commodities employ a higher ratio of capital to labor than do others, and the basic...