Institute for Social and Economic Change |
Working Paper: 372
Analysis of Revealed Comparative Advantage in Export of India’s Agricultural Products
Subhash Jagdambe
Abstract
This paper analyses the competitiveness of India’s agricultural products in world markets. Four indices of Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) were used at the four-digit level of Harmonised System (HS) of Classification for the period 2001 to 2013. Under live animal products, 7 out of 26 products showed Revealed Comparative Advantage. For vegetable products, 19 out of 58 showed strong Revealed Comparative Advantage. For products like animal or vegetable fat and prepared foodstuff, 3 out of 16 and 8 out of 49 showed Revealed Comparative Advantage respectively. Furher, the consistency tests reveal that the indices are less satisfactory as cardinal and ordinal measure but relatively satisfactory as dichotomous measure. Dichotomous measures are useful in identifying whether India has a comparative advantage in a particular product. The study has also found the pattern of RCA indices to be fairly stable over the years.