Essays on India's Economic Development
| dc.contributor.advisor | Chakraborty, Shankha | |
| dc.contributor.author | Gupta, Saurabh | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2022-10-04T20:49:33Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2022-10-04 | |
| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation is on the economic development of India during the past three decades with a focus on its changing industrial and household structure. Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction of the Indian economy and motivates the theme of the dissertation. In Chapter 2, I study the effects of transportation infrastructure on regional manufacturing activity. I exploit geographical and temporal variation in project implementation to argue for causal effects on the regional industrial outcomes. I investigate how highways can improve market competition between firms situated in geographically distant locations, and as a result, create incentives to invest in activities that improve productivity. The results show that highways had no direct effect on India’s manufacturing output growth and led to a decline in average manufacturing productivity. I argue that these results can be attributed to lack of improvements in allocative efficiency within regions, and slow movement of skilled labor into the manufacturing sector. These results are contrary to some recent work on India but in line with evidence presented in the wider literature on low-income countries In Chapter 3, I investigate the relationship between highways and female labor force participation (FLFP). Using census level data from India, I estimate how the construction of highways may have opened up market opportunities for households and consequently affected FLFP. I find that the effects are heterogeneous across districts with some districts experiencing an increase while others experiencing a decline in FLFP. The decline was driven mostly by married and educated women withdrawing from the manufacturing and services sectors. I also find suggestive evidence that highways led to an increase in labor force participation of low skilled women. In Chapter 4, jointly with Dr. Shankha Chakraborty, we examine how household decision making can explain India’s declining FLFP over the last three decades. We propose a tractable analytical model in which married women respond to opportunity costs of their labor hours when dividing their time between household and market production. The model incorporates cultural costs attached to female work and its negative effect on female labor supply. We highlight competing mechanisms at play that suggest a U-shaped pattern of FLFP in response to economic growth. Finally, Chapter 5 summarizes the results of the dissertation and presents a concluding remarks. | en_US |
| dc.description.embargo | 2024-08-09 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1794/27666 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | University of Oregon | |
| dc.rights | All Rights Reserved. | |
| dc.title | Essays on India's Economic Development | |
| dc.type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Department of Economics | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Oregon | |
| thesis.degree.level | doctoral | |
| thesis.degree.name | Ph.D. |
Files
Original bundle
1 - 1 of 1
Loading...
- Name:
- Gupta_oregon_0171A_13377.pdf
- Size:
- 1.69 MB
- Format:
- Adobe Portable Document Format