Assessing India's Competitive Exposure in U.S. Import Markets

This paper examines the evolution of India's competitive exposure to other nations on its sales into U.S. import goods markets over the 1996 to 2006 time frame. We show that the methodology employed, the Market Overlap Measure statistic, is superior for this type of competitive exposure analysis to statistics based on similarities in export profiles across nations. These export similarity profile measures have been used in prior research on India's competitive trade exposures by the IMF. Hence, this study provides a deeper understanding of how shifting U.S. import market shares in the decade preceding the sharp economic contraction in the United States has altered India's competitive exposure in U.S. import markets. The findings quantify the extent to which India's market exposures to higher income nations is rising, or falling, and provide some evidence on the extent to which India's sales into U.S. import goods markets are becoming more sophisticated and higher value added.