Regional Convergence and Catch-up in India between 1960 and 1992

This paper examines the evidence for regional convergence or catch-up in levels and growth rates of per capita income among the 16 major states in India between 1960 and 1992. The results — estimated using OLS, the within-group LSDV estimator, Re-Weighted Least Squares, and Least Trimmed Squares — establish that unconditional convergence in growth rates does not obtain, but that there is clear and robust evidence of conditional convergence. This suggests that important differences between observed state incomes are likely to be caused by different steady-state incomes, to which convergence occurs. The cross-state income distribution is analyzed and the greater polarization between states in terms of levels of income is established using measures of dispersion and kernel density estimates. A tentative conclusion is that a small group of states are pulling away from the rest of the distribution, causing an incipient second peak. JEL Classification: O11, O40, O53