Three essays on trade policy and factor mobility

Abstract

This dissertation consists of three essays on trade policy and factor mobility. The first essay of the dissertation deals with issues on trade policy. It focuses on the possibility of recipient immiserization under optimal export taxation in a multi-country framework. We find asymmetry between two nations is very crucial for recipient immiserization. The interesting finding is that being more aggressive in taxation is a disadvantage in gaining from receipts of transfers. The larger exporter exercises more market power and is also more vulnerable to the adverse welfare effects of transfer. v

Author–Screenwriter– Director (1930s–1950s): Articulating Authorship Through Self-Adaptations and Film Novelisations in Bengali

“…The lights in the clubhouse had been turned on. It was still quite empty’ (Das Majumdar, 2013, p. 79). Here, we find an experimentation of the short story with a new form of expression that was directly inspired by the cinematic screenplay, and is a one-off example that shows how literature was explicitly informed by film.…”

“…In 1908, Sir Matheson Lang, a Canadian-born Shakespearean stage actor, director and playwright, along with his wife, the English actress Nelly Hutin Britton, came to Calcutta to perform Shakespeare’s plays— Hamlet , Othello , King Lear , Merchant of Venice and Midsummer Night’s Dream —as well as Jerome K. Jerome’s The Passing of the Third Floor Back (Das Majumdar, 2013). For the 18-year-old Atorthy, it was a turning point in his creative and intellectual life as he watched all the performances and also got the opportunity to spend time with the couple, discussing Shakespeare’s works and their adaptations for the stage and screen, and how that could shape Atorthy’s own literary endeavours (p.18).…”

“…Russian literature became of great interest to the Bengali youth, especially Maxim Gorky’s works. Inspired by social realism and sympathising with the plight of the oppressed, Atorthy used Gorky’s play The Lower Depths (1902) as a model for his own play Matir Ghar (House of Clay) and then wrote the novel Chashar Meye (Peasant’s Daughter, 1924), which is said to be the first novel in Bengali literature that dealt exclusively with the lives of peasants (Das Majumdar, 2013). The novel was eventually adapted by Atorthy into a film in 1931, directed by Prafulla Roy.…”

Three essays on immigration and outsourcing

“…At that time some of the deported individuals will try to cross the U.S.-Mexico border again and again until they succeed. Hanson and Spilimbergo (1999) and Majumdar (2002) find strong evidence that apprehensions respond to changes in US immigration policy. Hanson and Spilimbergo (1999) find that apprehensions fell following the passage of legislation in 1986 and rose following the Immigration Act of 1990.…”