IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ess/wpaper/id3125.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Informalization of Industrial Labour in India: Are labour market rigidities and growing import competition to blame?

Author

Listed:
  • Bishwanath Goldar

Abstract

Since the 1980s, there has been increasing informalization of industrial labour in India. It has taken two forms: rising share of the unorganized sector in manufacturing employment and informalization of the organized manufacturing sector itself through subcontracting and use of temporary and contract workers. The paper investigates whether and how far labour market rigidities and increasing import competition are responsible for the increasing informalization on industrial labour in India. An econometric model is estimated for this purpose using unit level data of the NSS 61st round employment-unemployment survey for 2004-05. The estimated model explains the casual worker – regular worker dichotomy in manufacturing. The results show that labour market reforms tend to increase the creation of regular jobs, while import competition tends to raise casual employment among workers with education above primary. The results also show that education enhances the probability of getting a regular job.

Suggested Citation

  • Bishwanath Goldar, 2010. "Informalization of Industrial Labour in India: Are labour market rigidities and growing import competition to blame?," Working Papers id:3125, eSocialSciences.
    • Handle: RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:3125
    Note: Conference Papers
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.esocialsciences.org/Download/repecDownload.aspx?fname=Document13112010120.5322382.pdf&fcategory=Articles&AId=3125&fref=repec
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ahsan, Ahmad & Pagés, Carmen, 2009. "Are all labor regulations equal? Evidence from Indian manufacturing," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 62-75, March.
    2. Aditya Bhattacharjea, 2006. "Labour Market Regulation and Industrial Performance in India--A Critical Review of the Empirical Evidence," Working papers 141, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
    3. Timothy Besley & Robin Burgess, 2004. "Can Labor Regulation Hinder Economic Performance? Evidence from India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 119(1), pages 91-134.
    4. Sean M. Dougherty, 2009. "Labour Regulation and Employment Dynamics at the State Level in India," Review of Market Integration, India Development Foundation, vol. 1(3), pages 295-337, December.
    5. Dibyendu Maiti & Arup Mitra, 2010. "Skills, Informality, and Development," Labor Economics Working Papers 23037, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    6. Poonam Gupta & Rana Hasan & Utsav Kumar, 2008. "What Constrains Indian Manufacturing?," Macroeconomics Working Papers 22162, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    7. Dibyendu Maiti & Kunal Sen, 2010. "The Informal Sector in India," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 5(1), pages 1-13, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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:ess:wpaper:id:3125. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Padma Prakash). General contact details of provider: http://www.esocialsciences.org .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.