IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ind/icrier/249.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Service Sector as India's Road to Economic Growth?

Author

Listed:
  • Barry Eichengreen

    (Indian Council for Research on International Economic Rela)

  • Poonam Gupta

    (Indian Council for Research on International Economic Rela)

Abstract

Among fast growing developing countries, India is distinctive for the role of theservice sector. However, sceptics have raised doubts about both the quality andsustainability of the increase in service sector activity and its implications foreconomic development. Using National Accounts Statistics and cross-county data, weshow that the growth of services has been broad-based. We show that the growth ofservice sector employment is not simply disguised manufacturing activity. We alsofind that the skilled-unskilled mix of labour in the two sectors is becomingincreasingly similar. Hence, it is no longer obvious that manufacturing is the maindestination for the vast majority of Indian labour moving into the modern sector andthat modern services are only a viable destination for the highly skilled few. To theextent that the expansion of both modern manufacturing and modern services isconstrained by the availability of skilled labour, this just underscores the importancefor India of continuing to invest in labour skills. We conclude that sustainingeconomic growth and raising living standards will require shifting labour out ofagriculture into both manufacturing and services and not just into one or the other.

Suggested Citation

  • Barry Eichengreen & Poonam Gupta, "undated". "The Service Sector as India's Road to Economic Growth?," Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, New Delhi Working Papers 249, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, New Delhi, India.
    • Handle: RePEc:ind:icrier:249
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.icrier.org/pdf/Working%20Paper%20249.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kochhar, Kalpana & Kumar, Utsav & Rajan, Raghuram & Subramanian, Arvind & Tokatlidis, Ioannis, 2006. "India's pattern of development: What happened, what follows?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(5), pages 981-1019, July.
    2. Panagariya, Arvind, 2011. "India: The Emerging Giant," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199751563.
    3. Devesh Kapur & Pratap Bhanu Mehta, 2004. "Indian Higher Education Reform: From Half-Baked Socialism to Half-Baked Capitalism," CID Working Papers 108, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    4. Bosworth, Barry & Collins, Susan M. & Virmani, Arvind, 2007. "Sources of Growth in the Indian Economy," India Policy Forum, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 3(1), pages 1-69.
    5. Mrs. Poonam Gupta & Mr. James P. F. Gordon, 2004. "Understanding India’s Services Revolution," IMF Working Papers 2004/171, International Monetary Fund.
    6. J. Bradford Jensen & Lori G. Kletzer, 2005. "Tradable Services: Understanding the Scope and Impact of Services Outsourcing," Working Paper Series WP05-9, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    7. Rashmi Banga & B.N.Goldar, 2004. "Contribution of services to output growth and productivity in Indian manufacturing: Pre and post reforms," Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, New Delhi Working Papers 139, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, New Delhi, India.
    8. Ingo Borchert & Aaditya Mattoo, 2009. "The crisis-resilience of services trade," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(13), pages 2115-2136, August.
    9. Rajeev Dehejia & Arvind Panagariya, 2010. "Services Growth in India: A Look Inside the Black Box," Working Papers 4444, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, revised Apr 2010.
    10. Jagdish N. Bhagwati, 1984. "Splintering and Disembodiment of Services and Developing Nations," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 133-144, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Barry Eichengreen & Poonam Gupta, 2010. "The Service Sector as India’s Road to Economic Growth?," Development Economics Working Papers 23030, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    2. Barry Eichengreen & Poonam Gupta, 2010. "The Service Sector as India’s Road to Economic Growth?," Working Papers id:2604, eSocialSciences.
    3. Mishra, Saurabh & Lundstrom, Susanna & Anand, Rahul, 2011. "Service export sophistication and economic growth," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5606, The World Bank.
    4. Singh, Nirvikar, 2006. "Services-led industrialization in India: Assessment and lessons," MPRA Paper 1276, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Gupta, Poonam & Kumar, Utsav, 2010. "Performance of Indian Manufacturing in the Post Reform Period," MPRA Paper 24898, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Singh, Nirvikar, 2008. "India’s Development Strategy: Accidents, Design and Replicability," MPRA Paper 12453, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Poonam Gupta & Rana Hasan & Utsav Kumar, "undated". "What Constrains Indian Manufacturing?," Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, New Delhi Working Papers 211, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, New Delhi, India.
    8. Laura Alfaro & Anusha Chari, 2009. "India Transformed? Insights from the Firm Level 1988-2005," Harvard Business School Working Papers 10-030, Harvard Business School.
    9. Shankar Acharya, 2008. "India’s Macroeconomic Performance and Policies since 2000," Macroeconomics Working Papers 22138, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    10. K L Krishna & Deb Kusum Das & Abdul A Erumban & Suresh Aggarwal & Pilu Chandra Das, 2016. "Productivity Dynamics In India’S Service Sector: An Industry-Level Perspective," Working papers 261, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
    11. Ashok Kotwal & Bharat Ramaswami & Wilima Wadhwa, 2011. "Economic Liberalization and Indian Economic Growth: What's the Evidence?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1152-1199, December.
    12. Cortuk, O & Singh, N, 2015. "Analysing the structural change and growth relationship in India," Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt4qx907p3, Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz.
    13. Ejaz Ghani, 2011. "Reshaping Tomorrow : Is South Asia Ready for the Big Leap?," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 16360, December.
    14. Joseph Francois & Bernard Hoekman, 2010. "Services Trade and Policy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(3), pages 642-692, September.
    15. Castelló-Climent, Amparo & Mukhopadhyay, Abhiroop, 2013. "Mass education or a minority well educated elite in the process of growth: The case of India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 303-320.
    16. Ghani, Ejaz & Kharas, Homi, 2010. "The Service Revolution," World Bank - Economic Premise, The World Bank, issue 14, pages 1-5, May.
    17. Gupta, Poonam & Hasan, Rana & Kumar, Utsav, 2009. "Big Reforms but Small Payoffs: Explaining the Weak Record of Growth and Employment in Indian Manufacturing," MPRA Paper 13496, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Ghani,Syed Ejaz & Grover,Arti & Kerr,Sari & Kerr,William Robert, 2016. "Will market competition trump gender discrimination in India ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7814, The World Bank.
    19. Mehra, Rajnish, 2010. "Indian Equity Markets: Measures of Fundamental Value," India Policy Forum, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 6(1), pages 1-38.
    20. Beretta, Silvio & Targetti Lenti, Renata, 2011. "“India in the Outsourcing/Offshoring Process: A Western Perspective” - L’India nel processo di outsourcing/offshoring: un punto di vista occidentale," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 64(3), pages 269-296.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Services; Growth; Structural change; India; Employment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O14 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ind:icrier:249. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: G.K. Manjunath/A. Reddy (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/icriein.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.