Usha Nair-Reichert, Associate Professor in the School of Economics, has focused her current research on trade and financial reforms, foreign direct investment, and sustainable economic development. These interests are a natural offshoot of her previous work in the central bank in India in the areas of exchange control, trade, foreign direct investment and technology transfer policies.

Nair-Reichert's recent research includes a paper, "Firm Heterogeneity, Trade Liberalization and Duration of Trade and Production: The Case of India," co-authored with Tibor Besedes, Assistant Professor, School of Economics. The paper was accepted at conferences in Ljubljana, Slovenia and New Delhi, India in June 2009. An interesting result from this work which uses data on Indian firms indicates that, after controlling for initial firm productivity, trade liberalization decreases the likelihood that a firm will cease producing and/or exporting a given product. This work is part of an ongoing research project that seeks to establish changes in the duration of trade and production after trade liberalization as additional channels through which trade reforms could impact firm productivity and growth.

Another paper investigating these factors in India is titled, "Trade Liberalization, Firm Performance and Financing Constraints," and is co-authored with Olga Shemyakina, Assistant Professor, School of Economics. It was presented at the 2nd Georgia International/Development Economics Workshop at the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta in December 2008. This study indicates that financing constraints, such as unavailability of external funding, have had a negative and significant impact on the productivity of Indian firms during the period 1994-2006. However, being an exporter in a financially constrained industry partially mitigates the negative impact on productivity.

Nair-Reichert attended the scientific committee meeting of the European Economics and Finance Society (EEFS) at the University of Warsaw in Poland in June 2009. She presented a paper "Export Competitiveness and Access to Trade Facilitating Services," co-authored with Richard Cebula and Joy Mazumdar at the EEFS conference examining the role of liberalization of trade in services in facilitating trade in manufactured goods.