Sugata Marjit – författare

This book was written in honour of Professor Kalyan K. Sanyal, who was an excellent educator and renowned scholar in the field of international economics. One of his research papers co-authored with Ronald Jones, entitled “The Theory of Trade in Middle Products” and published in American Economic Review in 1982, was a seminal work in the field of international trade theory.  This paper would go on to inspire many subsequent significant works by researchers across the globe on trade in intermediate goods. The larger impact of any paper, beyond the number of citations, lies in terms of the passion it sparks among younger researchers to pursue new questions. Measured by this yardstick, Sanyal’s contribution in trade theory will undoubtedly be regarded as historic.After completing his Ph.D. at the University of Rochester he joined the Department of Economics at Calcutta University in the early 1980s and taught trade theory there for almost three decades. His insights,articulation and brilliance in teaching international economics have influenced and shaped the intellectual development of many of his students.  After his sudden passing in February 2012, his students and colleagues organized a symposium in his honour at the Department of Economics, Jadavpur University from April 19 to 20, 2012. This book, a small tribute to his intellect and contribution, has been a follow-up on that endeavour, and a collective effort of many people including his teachers, friends, colleagues and students. In a nutshell it discusses intermediation of various kinds with significant implications for market integration through trade and finance. That trade can generate many non-trade-service sector links has recently emerged as a topic of growing concern and can trace its lineage back to the idea of the middle product, a recurring concept in Prof. Sanyal’s work.

The main purpose of this book is to expose economics graduate students and researchers to the most significant development in international trade that has taken place in the recent past. Service transactions now make up a sizeable portion of global trade. Trade in both final and intermediate inputs is done virtually through information and communication networks, raising afresh the question of the basis of trade and calling for in-depth investigation. This book succinctly comes up with a relatively new explanation for the basis of trade, thus it adds a new dimension to three existing building blocks: technology, endowment, and returns to scale.

Against a backdrop of standard Ricardian and Heckscher–Ohlin competitive models of trade, the chapters of this book nicely introduce the issue of communication cost and the difference in time zones between two trading nations. Then follow many intricate phenomena such as informality, skill formation, growth, wage inequality, and decisions regarding foreign direct investment (FDI). However, imperfectly competitive models are not dealt with in great detail as they deserve more space than can be allotted to them here. Given the nonexistence of any research-oriented in-depth analyses of competitive trade models with time-zone differences, this book is a valuable addition to the resources available to researchers and policymakers interested in deciphering recent developments in global trade patterns and the subsequent welfare effect.