Growing Like India—the Unequal Effects of Service‐Led Growth

Tianyu Fan, Michael Peters and Fabrizio Zilibotti

Econometrica, 2023, vol. 91, issue 4, 1457-1494

Abstract: Structural transformation in most currently developing countries takes the form of a rapid rise in services but limited industrialization. In this paper, we propose a new methodology to structurally estimate productivity growth in service industries that circumvents the notorious difficulties in measuring quality improvements. In our theory, the expansion of the service sector is both a consequence—due to income effects—and a cause—due to productivity growth—of the development process. We estimate the model using Indian household data. We find that productivity growth in nontradable consumer services such as retail, restaurants, or residential real estate was an important driver of structural transformation and rising living standards between 1987 and 2011. However, the welfare gains were heavily skewed toward high‐income urban dwellers.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA20964

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:emetrp:v:91:y:2023:i:4:p:1457-1494

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.economet ... ordering-back-issues

Access Statistics for this article

Econometrica is currently edited by Guido W. Imbens

More articles in Econometrica from Econometric Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().