IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgif/1417.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why are Manufacturing Plants Smaller in Developing Countries? Theory and Evidence from India

Author

Listed:

Abstract

Poorer countries (and poorer states within India) have a larger share of manufacturing employment in small plants. This paper presents empirical evidence and a theoretical model to show that this relationship is driven by greater demand for lower quality goods in poorer regions, which can be produced efficiently in small plants. First, using data for India, we show that richer households buy higher price goods and larger plants produce higher price products. Second, we develop a model that matches these facts. Finally, we find that our model explains about forty percent of the cross-state variation in the size distribution of manufacturing plants in India.

Suggested Citation

  • Anil K. Jain & Siddharth Kothari, 2025. "Why are Manufacturing Plants Smaller in Developing Countries? Theory and Evidence from India," International Finance Discussion Papers 1417, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgif:1417
    DOI: 10.17016/IFDP.2025.1417
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/ifdp/files/ifdp1417.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17016/IFDP.2025.1417?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O16 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance
    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fedgif:1417. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.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.