Economic Reforms and Productivity Change in Selected Indian Industries

This book deals with growth of total factor productivity, rate of technical progress and its input bias in selected Indian industries since 1980, across phases of economic reforms as pursued in India during the Eighties and the Nineties. Technical efficiency in the automobile industry in India in recent years is also studied. This collection of papers is contributed by competent researchers in the area of productivity and efficiency analysis. The possible impacts of Economic Reforms of 1991 on total factor productivity growth (TFPG) are also examined in most of the works. Some papers have observed how growth of factor productivity and rate of technical progress and its input bias have fluctuated across various economic policy regimes since 1981 in Indian manufacturing industries. Structural shifts across phases of macroeconomic reforms in India since 1980 of key variables and indicators are tested econometrically. Apart from individual industry level studies, interstate comparisons of industrial performance and total factor productivity growth are also observed. The book includes studies on specific industry groups as food processing, textiles and automobiles. Interstate comparisons of total factor productivity growth are also made. Inter-industry comparison of productivity at the two digit (ASI) level of classification is done for West Bengal during 1981-97. The papers provide a clear-cut methodology in terms of econometric techniques and its applications in Indian industries. \'We hope that the book will be of considerable help to researchers and policy makers alike in the fields of growth and productivity analysis in Indian industries viewed in the context of the liberalization-privatization-globalization wave in India. We further hope that the book will be useful to productivity analysts in the new industrial economies of the developing world.