Deb Kusum Das Editor

Nisha Taneja, Professor Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), New Delhi, has been engaged in policy-oriented research for more than 30 years at ICRIER. She has extensive research experience on regional trade in South Asia and East Asia on issues related to tariffs, sensitive lists, services, investment, non-tariff measures, and trade and transport facilitation. She has led numerous research teams comprising national and international consultants in South and South-East Asia. She has worked closely with governments in the South Asian region and was recently appointed advisor to the Government of Nepal on trans-shipment. She has also worked as an International Consultant with the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization and the Asian Development Bank.

Deb Kusum Das teaches at the Department of Economics, Ramjas College. He has a PhD from the Delhi School of Economics and received the EXIM Bank IEDRA Award 2004 for his doctoral dissertation, “Some Aspects of Productivity and Trade in Indian Industry”. He is also associated with ICRIER as an external researcher and researched on important issues related to Indian economy: jobs, labour intensive manufacturing, India’s global competitiveness. His research interests are empirical international trade, labour markets and productivity growth of the Indian economy. He is the co founder of a network for South Asian undergraduate students of Economics (SAESM).

Samridhi Bimal is Consultant at ICRIER, New Delhi. She has over seven years of research expertise on international trade and trade policy issues related to the WTO, regional trading agreements and domestic trade policies. She has worked extensively on South Asia on a wide array of issues including trade, investment, transport facilitation, non-tariff barriers and informal trade. She has also been associated with the World Bank as a Short-term Consultant for their programme on Regional Integration in South Asia. Her research areas of interest include international trade, development policy and regional economics. She is currently a PhD scholar at the Centre for International Trade and Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi.