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Gouranga Gopal Das
Hanyang University, India
“That far-off land: A Production model of Land Deal and Host Country Effects”
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I am a development economist from Calcutta, India with particular interest in exploring the issues of growth and development in the context of the economies already integrated into the global trade and those, pursuing their efforts to catch up with the forces of globalization. Under the broad spectrum mentioned above, my specific research interest emphasizes on the issues related to: (i) Growth and Technological Change; (ii) Trade, International Economic Integration and Transmission of Technological Innovation; (iii) Human Capital Formation, Skill Acquisition and Adoption of Technology; (iv) Nexus of Trade, Technology and Environment.
I did my Masters Degree from Jadavpur University, Calcutta and M. Phil in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Subsequently, I did my PhD from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia on joint Overseas Post-graduate and Monash Graduate scholarships. I worked on a widely known global computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, the Global Trade Analysis Project’s GTAP, developed in Purdue University jointly with Monash University.
Following the doctoral research, my work in several contexts has shaped the contours of my research. Since my post-graduates studies, as different developing nations were undergoing trade reforms and structural changes the issues related to openness and economic development interested me. I did my Post-doctoral research at the University of Florida, Gainesville, USA in the context of forestry sector and biotechnology in case of the United States and other major countries. I was also an IMF-GDN fellow during 2005.
Apart from these issues, somewhat related other issues like outsourcing, better business and investment climate, employment and productivity convergence, inequality and poverty impact of trade-technology policy, impact of free trade agreement on labor market adjustment catch my eye every now and then. Subsequent research extends the analysis by considering the impact of socio-institutional factors like social acceptance, governance, corruption on technology-led growth process. For investigating the interplay of issues and context, I follow economy-wide Impact Analysis of these issues via Applied General Equilibrium Modeling—at the regional as well as global level.
During 2010, I was an Erasmus Mundus Scholar and United Nations University-World Institute of Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER, Helsinki), and at the Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. Deriving from my own experience, I believe that the most effective way is learning by researching and hence, this kind of seminar becomes a place of exchange and discussion where I hope to learn from each other and reflect on future directions of research. I am really looking forward to the forthcoming Oikos International Economics Academy 2011; where knowing everybody would enrich me very much by sharing knowledge with others.
During leisure hours, I indulge myself into all sorts of music (especially Indian Classical and Songs from Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel laureate from Bengal), reading books on non-economic topics, and talking with people in diverse areas of mutual interest. Although I reside in Seoul, South Korea, where baseball is most popular, Cricket—distantly related to it in style—is my favourite sport.