Articles by Rashmi Banga

The declaration of the World Trade Organization's 10th ministerial conference in Nairobi provides a leeway for "new issues" to enter the multilateral trade agreements. Some of these issues have appeared in mega Free Trade Agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. WTO debated bringing some of these under its ambit in its Singapore ministerial in 1996, only to jettison most of them by 2004. But trade and investment, trade and competition policy, transparency in government procurement, "labour standards" and provisions around state-owned enterprises could make their way to multilateral agreements after the Nairobi meeting, posing serious challenges to developing and least developed countries.

As an input into the production process, services are playing an increasingly important role in manufacturing industries the world over. Yet, this has received very little attention in the empirical economic literature on producer behaviour and productivity. This paper estimates the contribution of services to output growth and productivity in Indian manufacturing using the capital-labour-energy-materials-services production function. Panel data estimations are undertaken for 148 three-digit level industries for 18 years, 1980-81 to 1997-98 and sources of growth are analysed. The results show that the contribution of services input to output and productivity growth in manufacturing (organised) has increased substantially in the 1990s. One of the major causes for this is found to be the trade reforms undertaken in the post-1990s period.