Railways were integral to the development of the Indian economy before World War I. In this paper, we present new estimates of total factor productivity (TFP) for railways from 1874 to 1912, which highlight the strong performance of this key industrial sector. We find railway-industry TFP growth to be substantial, averaging 2.5 percent per year and generating a 3 percent social savings for the ...

— There is growing awareness of the problems of applying blueprint approaches to public sector management in developing countries, however scholars lack tools for context-specific policy advice. This paper develops an organitoring focuses on the short-term sizing framework for theories of bureaucratic action, and applies this theory to Indian forest departments’ tree-planting programs. Tree pla...

Using industry-level data disaggregated by states, this paper finds a positive impact of trade liberalization on labor-demand elasticities in the Indian manufacturing sector. These elasticities turn out to be negatively related to protection levels that vary across industries and over time. Furthermore, we find that these elasticities are not only higher for Indian states with more flexible lab...

The factors that are identified as drivers of adoption of wireless technology in the Indian healthcare sector are reported here. The study using both qualitative and quantitative techniques, in which 30 physicians were interviewed and 300 health professionals were surveyed (using a questionnaire) established that in addition to technology factors, other factors such as clinical factors, adminis...

From the perspective of poverty alleviation, socially relevant, or pro‐poor, rural innovation is of particular interest in a country like India since it is in rural areas that most of the poor live. Pro‐poor innovation in rural areas is more likely to occur through small‐scale ventures and entrepreneurs than industrial research and development. The Indian banking system does not su...