Land reform, poverty reduction and growth : evidence from India

In recent times there has been a renewed interest in relationships between redistribution, growth and welfare. Land reforms have been central to strategies to improve the asset base of the poor in developing countries thought their effectiveness has been hindered by political constraints on implementation. In this paper we use panel data on the sixteen main Indian states from 1958 to 1992 to consider whether the large volume of land reforms as have been legislated have had an appreciable impact on growth and poverty. The evidence presented suggests that land reforms do appear to be associated with poverty reduction

Can Labour Regulation Hinder Economic Performance? Evidence from India

This paper investigates whether the industrial relations climate in Indian States has affected the pattern of manufacturing growth in the period 1958-92. We show that pro-worker amendments to the Industrial Disputes Act are associated with lowered investment, employment, productivity and output in registered manufacturing. Regulating in a pro-worker direction is also associated with increases in urban poverty. This suggests that attempts to redress the balance of power between capital and labour can end up hurting the poor.Indian industrial relations, Industrial Disputes Act, manufacturing growth, pro-worker regulations, urban poverty, capital and labour.

Do Rural Banks Matter? Evidence from the Indian Social Banking Experiment

Lack of access to finance is often cited as a key reason why poor people remain poor. This paper uses data on the Indian rural branch expansion program to provide empirial evidence on this issue. Between 1977 and 1990, the Indian Central Bank mandated that a commercial bank can open a branch in a location with one or more bank branches only if it opens four in locations with no bank branches. We show that between 1977 and 1990 this rule caused banks to open relatively more rural branches in Indian states with lower initial financial development. The reverse is true outside this period. We exploit this fact to identify the impact of opening a rural bank on poverty and output. Our estimates suggest that the Indian rural branch expansion program significantly lowered rural poverty, and increased non-agricultural output.Finance and development, rural banking, bank licensing, credit constraints, structural change, diversification, redistribution, povery, growth.

Toward a microeconomics of growth

What drives growth at the microeconomic level? The authors divide the factors that determine a location's growth performance into two groups,"1st advantage"and"2nd advantage."The term 1st advantage refers to the conditions that provide the environment in which new activities can be profitably developed, including most of the factors on which traditional theory has focused, such as access to inputs (labor and capital), access to markets, provision of basic infrastructure, and the institutional environment. The term 2nd advantage refers to factors that increase returns to scale and can lead to cumulative causation processes. They may be acquired by learning, through technological spillovers, or by the development of thick markets of suppliers and local skills. The authors'analysis suggests that empirical investigation of the drivers of growth must shift down to a more microeconomic level. Such an analysis has become more feasible as data at the subnational level have become more available. By viewing recent empirical evidence on drivers of growth through their analytical framework, the authors are able to begin to sketch out a microeconomic agenda for growth. They emphasize that it is the manner in which 1st and 2nd advantages interact that shapes the pattern of development. The authors then turn to the example of how policy has affected manufacturing growth performance in India. They analyze links between the direction of state-level labor regulation and growth in the organized manufacturing sector, how state-led expansion of bank branches into rural areas has affected unregistered or informal manufacturing, and how the pre-reform technological capability of industries affected their response to liberalization in 1991. The analysis suggests that policy choices at the local level affect growth. Both theory and empirics need to downshift to the microeconomic level if we are to make advances in identifying specific means of encouraging innovation and growth.Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Economic Theory&Research,Labor Policies,Decentralization,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Health Economics&Finance,Governance Indicators,Achieving Shared Growth

How to browse and search in RADAR

This guide provides step by step instructions for using the 'browse' and 'search' functions in RADAR

Tackling extreme poverty: in conversation with Robin Burgess

Who are the ultra-poor and how can development policy address their particular needs? In today’s blog, Professor Robin Burgess discusses the results of a research project with the Bangladesh-based development NGO BRAC

From KAPTUR to VADS4R: Exploring Research Data Management in the Visual Arts

Across the higher education sector, research councils, organizations, teams, and researchers are under pressure to make publicly funded research data freely available, and in line with the Research Councils UK guidance. Publication of data resulting from the research is increasingly a requirement of funding. Equally important is data transparency and the ability for researchers to access data in order to test the validity and reliability of the research outputs and methods; to reinterpret and reuse data, thereby adding value to publicly funded research; and, ultimately, to access the data in the longer term. By its very nature, research in the visual arts is highly complex and varied, often comprising a wide variety of outputs and formats that present researchers, information managers, and technology teams with many discipline-specific issues. Examples include sketch books, paintings, architectural plans and buildings, physical artifacts, and complex modelling algorithms. Additionally, the methods and processes that generate this type of research information are just as varied and complex. Research in the visual arts relies heavily on sketchbooks, logbooks, journals, and workbooks. Alongside this data, a wide range of related research documentation and protocols (such as “how-to guides” and methodology reports) are also created. The physical nature of research in the arts presents researchers and curators with significant problems with security and preservation issues while also greatly increasing the risk of data loss and deterioration. Issues arise, for example, in the field of architecture. When data is locked up in the physical building that has been created as the output, how can this information be preserved and managed?JISC and AHR

Benchmarking government provision of social safety nets

The question of how much governments should spend on social programs generally, or safety nets in particular, is of great obvious interest to policymakers but is extremely difficult to address empirically. The approach in this paper differs from others by assuming that what governments can potentially do in terms of spending on social programs is given by what governments across the world are actually observed to be doing on average. After first briefly reviewing the existing methodologies, their limitations, and what can be learned, an analysis of 63 countries spending patterns from 1972-1997 is presented using a comparative benchmarking methodology. Unconditional rankings of spending on safety nets and other health and education social programs are refined by controlling for various factors which affect the ability to fund programs. Two sets of factors are examined: (i) structural features captured by regional dummy variables and characteristics of the underlying populations; and (ii) quality of government as reflected in measures of corruption, rule of law, political pressure, and others. Separate analyses are conducted across countries for selected welfare indicators such as the infant mortality rate and life expectancy at birth and for states in India, for which additional information is available on macroeconomic factors and institutional features influencing safety nets spending. The approach generates a picture as to how states are performing relative to international expenditure norms and may be useful to policymakers in determining the appropriate level of overall spending.Health Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Safety Nets and Transfers,Rural Poverty Reduction,Poverty Assessment

The Unequal Effects of Liberalization: Evidence fromDismantling the License Raj in India

This paper investigates whether the effects, on registered manufacturing out-put,employment, entry and investment, of dismantling the 'license raj' - a system of centralcontrols regulating entry and production activity in this sector - vary across Indian stateswith different labor market regulations. The effects are found to be unequal depending onthe institutional environment in which industries are embedded. In particular, followingdelicensing, industries located in states with pro-employer labor market institutions grewmore quickly than those in pro-worker environments. Our results emphasize how localinstitutions matter for whether industry in a region benefits or is harmed by thenationwide delicensing reform.

The Unequal Effects of Liberalization: Evidence from Dismantling the License Raj in India

This paper investigates whether the effects, on registered manufacturing out- put, employment, entry and investment, of dismantling the .license raja system of central controls regulating entry and production activity in this sector .vary across Indian states with different labor market regulations. The effects are found to be unequal depending on the institutional environment in which industries are embedded. In particular, following de-licensing, industries located in states with pro-employer labor market institutions grew more quickly than those in pro-worker environments. Our results emphasize how local institutions matter for whether industry in a region benefits or is harmed by the nationwide delicensing reform.delicensing, economic development, labour regulation