Does the Gravity Model Explain India’s Direction of Trade? A Panel Data Approach

Abstract

In this paper we apply the gravity model to the panel consisting of India’s yearly bilateral trade data with all its trading partners in the second half of the twentieth century. The main conclusions that emerge from our analyses are: (1) The core gravity model can explain around 43 per cent of the fluctuations in India’s direction of trade in the second half of the twentieth century (2) India’s trade responds less than proportionally to size and more than proportionally to distance (3) Colonial heritage is still an important factor in determining India’s direction of trade at least in the second half of the twentieth century (4) India trades more with developed rather than underdeveloped countries, however (5) size has more determining influence on India’s trade than the level of development of the trading partner.