Impact of India’s Free Trade Agreement with ASEAN on Its Goods Exports: A Gravity Model Analysis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments for the paper

Economies-2097187 - Impact of India’s Free Trade Agreement with ASEAN on its Goods Exports: A Gravity Model Analysis

After a decade of signing the AIFTA in 2009, India and ASEAN have jointly decided to review the agreement. Despite a noteworthy increase in trade post the FTA signing between these two regions, the data indicates that the benefits have been more skewed towards ASEAN. Given India's increasing trade deficit and the signifi-cance of ASEAN in India's foreign policies, the research goal of this study was to determine the trade and export relationship between these two regions and find the extent to which AIFTA effectively influenced it. Additionally, along with its primary aim, the study also intended to determine what other factors influenced the trade and export relationship between these two regions and what future changes were needed in order for this partnership to be mutually beneficial. To fulfill the objective, an augmented gravity model was applied to a panel data. The study concludes that the adoption of the AIFTA increased trade significantly but had no sig-nificant impact on raising exports. The study has identified rising NTMs as one of the important variables impeding India's realization of its export potential in this region. Aside from NTMs, the study identifies country GDP, trade openness and the interaction variable of AIFTA and NTM’s to have impacted India's ability to realize its export potential in this region.

 

1.     Abstract. The abstract of the article should be changed. The authors widen from " After a decade of signing the AIFTA in 2009, India.... and find the extent to which AIFTA effectively influenced it. ", and fail to give a summary of his work. They should note in the abstract what research question they are examining, the method they are applying, the sample period of the empirical analysis, etc.

2.     Contribution. The authors mentioned, "Consequently, the prime objective of the study is to analyze ….bilateral trade and exports to this region.” This is very important points. However, the authors may need to add and elaborate further this contribution of their studies on following aspect i) methodological contribution, and ii) theoretical contribution.

3.     Figure 1, please note the source of data.

4.     The authors should analyze the panel unit root and cointegration test more in the empirical section of the paper.

5.     The authors should put more effort and thoroughly discuss point estimates, estimated effects, and the intuition behind the results backed up by the literature.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is very interesting and well organised. Empirical analysis is reasonably comprehensive.  Most of the results are well presented and discussed in an interesting manner. In overall terms, the paper makes a good contribution to the literature. However, I feel that the paper will become more interesting if some more recent related studies are cited. The literature on gravity models is extensive.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper in this version is improved.