Dr. Avik Chakrabarti and Mr. Arijit Mukherjee are the winners of the Exim Bank International Trade Research Award 1998 for their theses entitled "Foreign Direct Investment and Host Country Interaction: A Strategic Approach" and "International Joint Ventures and Technology Transfer in Developing Economies: Theoretical Analysis" respectively. Dr. Chakrabarti obtained his doctorate from The University of Michigan in 1998 and is currently Assistant Professor at Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin. Mr. Mukherji submitted his thesis to Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta in 1996. Mr. Mukherji is a Ford Foundation Fellow at the School of International Studies, New Delhi.

2. Established in 1989, the ITRA Annual Award is given for doctoral dissertations in the area of International Trade and related financing. 1998 is the tenth year of the Award.

The Award carries a prize of Rupees One lakh and a citation. The Award aims to stimulate research in the areas of International Trade.

Winning Entries

3. Dr. Chakrabarti in his thesis on "Foreign Direct Investment and Host Country Interaction" evaluates the importance of various factors by other studies in the area of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), using 9 year data on 112 countries. These results suggest that there is a strong correlation between market size, political stability and openness of a host country and its FDI. Other factors such as inflation, budget deficit and external debt do not appear to have much explanatory power on FDI. The thesis also looks at the determinants leading to growing disparity in the distribution of FDI among the developing nations. While China stands out as the largest recipient, the Sub-Saharan African countries and the countries of Middle East and North Africa are experiencing a continuous drying up of inbound FDI. Based on empirical analysis of 9 year data of 38 developing countries, in addition to the well accepted determinant of market size, two other factors viz. Regional market size is found to have a significant positive association and regional protection a significant negative association. FDI is found to be more strongly responsive to a country's political stability than to any of the other determinants in the political-economic model followed by regional market size, regional protection and own protection respectively. As regards the role of labour cost in attracting FDI no significant effect or positive association is established.

4. Dr. Mukherjee's thesis is on International Joint Ventures and Technology Transfer in Developing Economies. The thesis analyses the issues which impact on the preferences of joint ventures over technology licensing including the impact of host country policy and threat of imitation. Empirical findings show that in an economy with relatively weak patent protection, foreign firms prefer joint venture than licensing and better technology comes from joint ventures than licensing. The factors which influence technology licensing under various market structures including duopoly and oligopoly and the commitments by way of capacity installation or incentives have also been studied. Initial industry structure and technological differences among the firms are key factors determining the profitability of bilateral agreements.

Exim Bank of India

5. Exim Bank aims to promote India's International trade. The Bank offers to Indian companies a comprehensive range of finance, information and advisory services, supported by analysis and research, with a view to enhancing their international competitiveness. The annual International Trade Research Awards represents the Bank's ongoing efforts at promoting research and analysis in the area of international trade.