IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this paper

Highway to Success: The Impact of the Golden Quadrilateral Project for the Location and Performance of Indian Manufacturing

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Ejaz Ghani

    ()

    (World Bank)

  • Grover Goswami

    ()

    (World Bank)

  • William R. Kerr

    ()

    (Harvard Business School, Entrepreneurial Management Unit)

Abstract

We investigate the impact of the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) highway project on the Indian organized manufacturing sector using enterprise data. The GQ project upgraded the quality and width of 5,846 km of roads in India. We use a difference-in-difference estimation strategy to compare non-nodal districts based upon their distance from the highway system. We find several positive effects for non-nodal districts located 0-10 km from GQ that are not present in districts 10-50 km away, most notably higher entry rates and increases in plant productivity. These results are not present for districts located on another major highway system, the North-South East-West corridor (NS-EW). Improvements for portions of the NS-EW system were planned to occur at the same time as GQ but were subsequently delayed. Additional tests show that the GQ project's effect operates in part through a stronger sorting of land-intensive industries from nodal districts to non-nodal districts located on the GQ network. The GQ upgrades further helped spread economic activity to moderate-density districts and intermediate cities.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/pages/download.aspx?name=13-040.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by Harvard Business School in its series Harvard Business School Working Papers with number 13-040.

as
in new window

Length: 38 pages
Date of creation: Nov 2012
Handle: RePEc:hbs:wpaper:13-040
Contact details of provider: Postal:
Soldiers Field, Boston, Massachusetts 02163

Phone: 617.495.6000
Web page: http://www.hbs.edu/

More information through EDIRC

Keywords: Highways; roads; infrastructure; India; development; manufacturing; density; rent.;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General
  • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance
  • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship
  • L60 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - General
  • L80 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - General
  • L90 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - General
  • L91 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Transportation: General
  • L92 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Railroads and Other Surface Transportation
  • M13 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - New Firms; Startups
  • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
  • R00 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General - - - General
  • R10 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - General
  • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
  • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as
in new window


  1. Ejaz Ghani & Arti Grover Goswami & William R. Kerr, 2012. "Is India’s Manufacturing Sector Moving Away From Cities?," Harvard Business School Working Papers 12-090, Harvard Business School.
  2. Taryn Dinkelman, 2011. "The Effects of Rural Electrification on Employment: New Evidence from South Africa," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 3078-3108, December.
  3. 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.
  4. Poonam Gupta & Rana Hasan & Utsav Kumar, 2008. "What Constrains Indian Manufacturing?," Macroeconomics Working Papers 22162, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
  5. Otto, Glenn & Voss, Graham M, 1994. "Public Capital and Private Sector Productivity," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 70(209), pages 121-132, June.
  6. Gilles Duranton & Matthew A. Turner, 2011. "The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion: Evidence from US Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2616-2652, October.
  7. Nataraj, Shanthi, 2011. "The impact of trade liberalization on productivity: Evidence from India's formal and informal manufacturing sectors," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 292-301.
  8. 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.
  9. Ejaz Ghani & William R. Kerr & Stephen O'Connell, 2014. "Spatial Determinants of Entrepreneurship in India," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(6), pages 1071-1089, June.
  10. Chang-Tai Hsieh & Peter J. Klenow, 2009. "Misallocation and Manufacturing TFP in China and India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 124(4), pages 1403-1448.
  11. Gilles Duranton & Diego Puga, 2001. "Nursery Cities: Urban Diversity, Process Innovation, and the Life Cycle of Products," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1454-1477, December.
  12. Banerjee, Abhijit & Duflo, Esther & Qian, Nancy, 2012. "On the Road: Access to Transportation Infrastructure and Economic Growth in China," CEPR Discussion Papers 8874, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  13. S. Mahendra Dev, 2008. "India," Chapters,in: Handbook on the South Asian Economies, chapter 1 Edward Elgar Publishing.
  14. J. Vernon Henderson, 2010. "Cities And Development," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(1), pages 515-540.
  15. Guy Michaels, 2008. "The Effect of Trade on the Demand for Skill: Evidence from the Interstate Highway System," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(4), pages 683-701, November.
  16. Hasan, Rana & L. Jandoc, Karl Robert, 2010. "The Distribution of Firm Size in India: What Can Survey Data Tell Us?," ADB Economics Working Paper Series 213, Asian Development Bank.
  17. Dave Donaldson, 2010. "Railroads of the Raj: Estimating the Impact of Transportation Infrastructure," NBER Working Papers 16487, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  18. Rosenthal, Stuart S. & Strange, William C., 2004. "Evidence on the nature and sources of agglomeration economies," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics,in: J. V. Henderson & J. F. Thisse (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 49, pages 2119-2171 Elsevier.
  19. Roberts, Mark & Deichmann, Uwe & Fingleton, Bernard & Shi, Tuo, 2012. "Evaluating China's road to prosperity: A new economic geography approach," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 580-594.
  20. Ulimwengu, John & Funes, Jose & Headey, Derek & You, Liangzhi, 2009. "Paving the way for development?: The impact of transport infrastructure on agricultural production and poverty reduction in the Democratic Republic of Congo," IFPRI discussion papers 944, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
  21. Glenn Ellison & Edward L. Glaeser & William R. Kerr, 2010. "What Causes Industry Agglomeration? Evidence from Coagglomeration Patterns," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 1195-1213, June.
  22. Arup Mitra & Aristomène Varoudakis & Marie-Ange Véganzonès, 1998. "State Infrastructure and Productive Performance in Indian Manufacturing," OECD Development Centre Working Papers 139, OECD Publishing.
  23. Nathaniel Baum-Snow, 2007. "Did Highways Cause Suburbanization?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 122(2), pages 775-805.
  24. Michael L. Lahr & Rodrigo Duran & Anupa Varughese, 2004. "Estimating the Impact of Highways on Average Travel Velocities and Market Size," Urban/Regional 0403009, EconWPA.
  25. Ana M. Fernandes & Ariel Pakes, 2008. "Factor Utilization in Indian Manufacturing: A Look at the World Bank Investment Climate Surveys Data," NBER Working Papers 14178, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  26. Kathuria, Vinish & Seethamma Natarajan, Rajesh Raj & Sen, Kunal, 2010. "Organized versus Unorganized Manufacturing Performance in India in the Post-Reform Period," MPRA Paper 20317, University Library of Munich, Germany.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.

as
in new window


Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hbs:wpaper:13-040. 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: (Soebagio Notosoehardjo)

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 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.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.