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New trends in global trade including rise in services, global value chains, and the digital economy are opening up important economic opportunities for women. Trade has the potential to expand women's role in the economy, decrease inequality, and expand women's access to skills and education. Trade can dramatically improve women's lives, creating new jobs, enhancing consumer choice, and increasing women's bargaining power in society. In Bangladesh economy, the women led micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) play a noteworthy role by providing services and goods, creating employment generation particularly for women (UN Women, 2020). According to an ILO report, the majority of female-owned SMEs in Bangladesh are involved in the trading sector, followed by the manufacturing and service sectors (Fatima, 2023). This chapter is based on the case studies on 50 women entrepreneurs in various levels in Bangladesh and 10 key informant interviews of government officials, business associations, academics, researcher, microcredit organizations. This is encouraging that due to government's women friendly policies and organizational supports along with better networking through social media in Bangladesh, more and more women of various backgrounds in Bangladesh are coming to business though still concentrated on few traditional areas but they are making space for themselves and creating employment for poorest segment of women and educated young women.

The context of skill creation and its development is fundamental to sustainable economic growth with vertical improvement in well-being. Now when it comes to the case of less developed countries, the implication of international trade in skill formation takes an idiosyncratic shape so far as our concern: a dearth of skill education and lack of evenness in access to skill education due to the underlying rampant and pronounced economic inequality (i.e., inequality in income and wealth) among people as what is quite typical. Against this backdrop, this chapter seeks to develop a general equilibrium model in line with Jones (1965 & 1971) and Beladi and Marjit (1996) to address how leveraging of foreign trade through technological modernization of exports may work toward skill formation in less developed economies with technological dualism, informalization, and disguised unemployment. Besides, this chapter brings to glare how benefit of such modernization toward skill development stands out to be weighed against a potential worsening of distributive justice in terms of rise in wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers. Moreover, this chapter seeks to overhaul the implication of liberalization of labor market in terms of dilution of minimum wage standard for human development. Thus, the bottom line is that comes up here forth that export modernization in name of improving external competitiveness and thereof attaining effective trade openness can promote skilled human but only risking an exacerbation of wage inequality.

This study aims to determine the export price pass-through elasticity, specifically for Indian exports. It employs static and dynamic panel data techniques to estimate these elasticities. Notably, the pass-through effect is more significant in the long term compared to the short term. The dynamic panel analysis, considering broader economic factors, identifies trade openness and global demand as statistically significant in explaining export price variations. Additionally, the study reveals that the response of export prices to exchange rate changes depends on the nature of those changes, with depreciation having a lesser impact than appreciation. Furthermore, this chapter emphasizes the importance of analyzing these effects at the product level for a comprehensive understanding of the underlying mechanisms. The implications of these findings underscore the crucial role of exchange rates as a policy tool for promoting exports and economic growth, as well as their potential in reducing current account deficits.

The liberalization initiative commenced in India from 1991 onwards, replacing the four-decade long import substitution policy. The primary objective was to enhance the role of foreign and private investment, in line with the newly embraced outward-oriented growth model. The government had undertaken several policy initiatives since then, especially to strengthen the manufacturing sector which plays an important role in the economic development of any country. The current study evaluates the effects of the liberalization policy in India on industrial outcomes. Recent studies have found that when firm heterogeneity is present in trade models, reforms will lead to a decrease in the number of firms and a rise in their average size (Melitz, 2003). A dataset of 24 manufacturing industries had been used in the current study. We test empirically whether liberalization had led to a rise in the average size of establishments as stated in the literature. We also attempt to analyze the magnitude of trade costs in terms of the impact of reforms on wages and prices. The empirical analysis based on the difference-in-difference (DID) estimation method shows that on average, trade reforms do not lead to an increase in the real wages and average size of establishments. In addition, prices appear to increase in the long run due to liberalization, with potential ramifications.

One of the major objectives of India's National Auto Policy (NAP) (2018) is to help the country emerge as a hub for automotive production and research and development (R&D). In order to fulfill this long-term objective, two policies had been proposed by NAP (2018). First, possibility of exploring regional trade agreements (RTAs) with leading countries, having attractive markets for Indian players, was considered. Second, the policy aimed to evaluate the potential implications of joining the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) WP.29 1958 agreement within the next 5 years for tackling the potential major technical barriers to trade (TBT), as India's current accession in UNECE WP.29 1998 agreement may not be sufficient for ensuring mutual recognition of standards in many of the partner countries. India is presently engaged in RTA negotiations with several developed and developing countries, with potentially beneficial repercussions for automobile exports. However, the question of accession to UNECE WP.29 1958 agreement has not received similar attention of late, which may restrain the anticipated sectoral export growth, particularly through RTA-led market access outcomes. Given this background, the current analysis considers India's potential sectoral trade growth with eight partner countries, in the case of RTA-led tariff reforms, through a WITS-SMART simulation exercise. The obtained simulation results indicate that India needs to focus on the technical standard harmonization question for reaping the full benefits arising from tariff reforms in several upcoming RTAs, for boosting auto-exports in the post-RTA period.

The global economy has already experienced recession in 1975, 1982, 1991, 2007 (the Great Recession or the Global Financial Meltdown), and 2020 (The Pandemic Recession). When hope of recovery has just started to emerge with real gross domestic product (GDP) growth reaching 5.7% in 2021, dark clouds are gathering ominously on the horizon again. In January 2022, the World Bank's forecasts (for global growth) were 4.1% for 2022 and 3.3% for 2023. Not only the indicators like industrial activity are shrinking, consumer and investor confidence is at a low point, workers are losing jobs, profit margins and global trade are showing a downward trend, after a period of post-pandemic expansion. But most worrying is the slowing down of the Big Trio of USA-China-Euro Zone that currently accounts for over 50% of real global GDP in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms and contributed 62% to global growth over 2015–2019. Moreover, energy and food prices are showing rising trend, and Ukraine war is showing no sign of ending in the near future. In this context, the present chapter attempts to analyze whether with prices rising and productive activities (including trade) shrinking (described as “stagflation”), is the world headed for another serious slump, and if that happens, what will be its severity? It also tries to point out some limitations of the policy suggestions of the structural projection models used by the World Bank. It also tries to point out the policy suggestions of the models used by the World Bank.

This chapter is intended to investigate the ramifications of foreign trade regime on the technological front in relation with the impact of between trade liberalization on the process of skill formation in dual economy setting and thereby, the wage dynamics facing the skilled and unskilled labor. The ideation toward this end is owed to the seminal literature concerning the connection between free trade and economic dualism, general and the implication of such nexus on skilling process, in particular. Hence, based on the above dispensation, it may be possible to analyze the consequence of free trade on knowledge economy (wherein, the knowledge essentially purports to technical skill, proficiency in various aspects of work and perhaps, to some extent, the case of innovation) and additionally, what it impinges on welfare and economic development for less developed countries. The theoretical underpinning of the baseline model is based basically on the dualistic structure of the economy with regional specifications of the factors. In this framework, it has been examined that under the condition liberal trade policy in a less developed country, featured by reduced tariff, how it makes up for the formation of knowledge capital in the presence of technology-intensive export sector employed skilled and, in such process, if wage inequality gets exacerbated or otherwise. This is further drawn to investigating the implicit change in the propensity of rural–urban migration of unskilled labor, consequent upon the escalation openness to foreign trade; in what holds out significantly as regards the persistence of economic dualism, in general and balanced growth phenomenon between urban and rural sectors, in particular.

For the past few years, in a purely competitive and dynamic environment, the supply chain plays a crucial role to adapt the business as it is very contingent on collaborative integration as well as flexibility. Many specialized applications are implemented to improve the flow control of the supply chain. One of the most important new technological applications in the supply chain is blockchain technology which has garnered the attention of many business owners as this technology can be quickly adapted to the dynamic business environment. Blockchain technology has been gaining importance and acceptability over the past few years. Blockchain technology has found significant success in all fields, including the banking and finance sector, health, manufacturing, transportation, and many others. Recently, the researchers have contributed significantly toward understanding blockchain technology and its application in the organizational and technology-specific factors that play a crucial role in driving its adoption in the supply chain. Blockchain technology plays a vital role to maintain trust among the stakeholder of the supply chain. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss a theoretical framework for blockchain adoption in the supply chain in business. The outcomes of this chapter endorse that companies invest in blockchain technology so that the supply chain becomes more transparent, flexible, and secure. In the end, this chapter has also given contemplations on the security issues of implementing blockchain in the field of collaboration and integration.