Determinants of India's cotton export performance: An empirical analysis

Cotton export performance plays a critical role in bridging the gaps in India's soaring trade deficits and helps in maximizing the overall gains from international trade. We examine the impact of macroeconomic determinants on India's cotton export performance using data from 1990 to 2020. To assess the long-run and short-run impacts on cotton export performance, an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model has been deployed. The findings reveal that yield and export price have had statistically positive significant impact on India's cotton export performance over the long-run and short-run. However, the resulting estimates of market size and exchange rate do have a mixed effect on cotton export performance over the period. Moreover, our results offer some important policy implications for the stakeholders including the farmers, exporters, and government to enhance Agri-product competitiveness.