Trade Liberalisation and Export Performance in India: A Statistical Verification

Abstract

The study statistically verifies the growth, variability, sources of variability and the impact of export instability on economic growth and environment in the Indian case in the process of ongoing policy reforms. To this end, growth, export instability and variance of the logarithm of export earnings around an exponential trend are estimated to assess the relative importance of price and quantity fluctuations. The major findings of the study are as follows: First, exports of the Indian agriculture and allied products and of manufactured have increased significantly since the initiation of trade liberalisation; secondly, export earnings instability is the main due to volume instability rather than price variability; thirdly, export instability showed a negative and a statistically significant impact on economic performance of the economy; and finally, the results obtained are similar to those reported earlier for less developed countries.