Abstract:
In the current context of a liberalising economy that is attempting to industrialise within the spaces provided by a world capitalist system, exports of manufactured goods is the key to industrial transformation, and especially so for a resource scarce and densely populated economy like India. The thesis that more open economies have grown faster than those less open, is stronger than what its very influential supporter (the World Bank) imagines. Smaller countries (in terms of population) tend to be more open than larger. This is only natural. The deviation of actual openness from the structurally determined openness' explains growth in large panel data sets (across countries and time) better than any other variable, particularly in case of populous economies.
