| Role | Research Consultant |
| Institution | Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), New Delhi |
| Tenure | September 2001 – September 2002 · January – July 2003 |
| Focus | FDI, knowledge-based industries & international competitiveness |
| Highlights | World Bank & ADB studies · a CMDR monograph · 3 journal articles · 5 RIS discussion papers |
This is where my research career began. As a consultant at RIS — one of India’s leading policy think tanks on developing-country issues — I worked closely with Dr. Nagesh Kumar on India’s competitiveness in knowledge-based industries and on the development effects of foreign investment. Several of the threads I picked up here would run through the rest of my career, and some of this early work matured, years later, into among the most-cited writing I have done.
Three research projects
My work at RIS centred on three sponsored studies:
- A Strategic Approach to Strengthening International Competitiveness in Knowledge-Based Industries (2001–2003) — funded by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, examining how FDI inflows, policy, and firms’ own technological effort shape knowledge-intensive exports.
- Foreign Direct Investment, Externalities, and Economic Growth (2002) — a background paper for the World Bank’s Global Development Finance 2002, on how FDI fosters growth and generates externalities in developing countries.
- Foreign Direct Investment, Trade, and Development (2003) — part of a programme initiated by the Asian Development Bank, Manila.
Publications
The period’s monograph, written with Nagesh Kumar, was Economic Reforms, WTO, and Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Industry: Implications of Emerging Trends (CMDR Monograph No. 42, 2003). Three peer-reviewed journal articles also appeared, all in 2002:
| Year | Article | Journal |
|---|---|---|
| 2002 | Liberalization, Firm Size, and R&D Performance: A Firm-Level Study of Indian Pharmaceutical Industry | Journal of Indian School of Political Economy, 14(4) |
| 2002 | Foreign Direct Investment and Economic Growth in India: A Production Function Analysis | The Indian Journal of Economics, 82(327) |
| 2002 | Does Human Development Policy Matter for Economic Growth? Evidence from Indian States (with Vinoj Abraham) | South Asia Economic Journal, 3(1) |
Five RIS discussion papers circulated the work in progress:
- #27/2002 — Foreign Direct Investment, Externalities, and Economic Growth in Developing Countries
- #40/2003 — Liberalization, Firm Size, and R&D Performance in the Indian Pharma Industry
- #42/2003 — Export Performance of Indian Enterprises in Knowledge-Based Industries
- #43/2003 — Export Competitiveness in Knowledge-Based Industries
- #63/2003 — Rise of Service-Sector Outward Foreign Direct Investment from India
The first of these — discussion paper #27, the World Bank study — was later revised into the book chapter “Foreign Direct Investment, Externalities and Economic Growth in Developing Countries” (with Nagesh Kumar; Palgrave, 2005), which has gone on to become my single most-cited piece of work. The knowledge-based-industries papers (#42 and #43) similarly fed the two chapters on knowledge-based exports from India that appeared from Oxford University Press in 2007.
Academic engagement
I presented this work at two forums: the CMDR seminar on Economic Reforms and the Health Sector in India (February 2003), where I discussed the WTO and the Indian pharmaceuticals industry; and a RIS workshop on international competitiveness (July 2003), on India’s strategy for high-technology exports.
In reflection
RIS was the beginning — my first research position, my first sustained collaboration, and the place where the questions that would occupy me for the next two decades first took hold: how foreign investment shapes development, and how a developing economy builds competitiveness in knowledge-intensive industries. That so much of what followed traces back to these two short years is, looking back, the clearest sign of how formative they were.
Related on this site
The next chapter: Contributions at the Gujarat Institute of Development Research (GIDR), Ahmedabad
