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This thesis seeks to understand multinational activity in Indian industry after the reforms of 1991. Chapter 2 models two effects of inward FDI on local industry - linkage and competition effects. We develop a two-sector model with vertical product differentiation in the downstream sector and a monopolistically competitive upstream sector. We show that a domestic content requirement increases both linkage and competition effects, and can raise domestic welfare through growth of upstream industry, and increased consumer welfare. The stronger are linkage effects, and lower the income level, the greater are benefits from a DCR. Chapter 3 presents descriptive statistics and stylized facts about multinationals in India. We consider sectoral destination, characteristics, and performance of MNCs. We find MNC investment is horizontal and that they are more profitable than domestic firms. A model of distribution dynamics is used to investigate persistence in profitability. Differences in performance are driven by persistence of profits of highly profitable MNCs. In Chapter 4 we test for the effects of FDI reforms on firm performance. By constructing treatment and control groups and using pre and post reform data, we isolate the impact of reforms. We find that local firms' profitability has been reduced by the entry of new MNCs. However, pre-existing MNC profits have not been significantly affected by reforms. We find some evidence that MNCs are more efficient than local firms. In Chapter 5, we analyze export behaviour of Indian firms. Decomposing exports shows that post-reform export growth has been driven by surviving firms. We model the decision of the firm to export, and find that there are substantial sunk costs to exporting. Firm characteristics - size, profitability and multinationality - are important determinants of exporting. We find evidence for spillovers from general exporting activity but not from MNC presence in the industry on exporting.

This thesis assesses the applicability of the neoclassical "Solow" growth model to the recent experience of the countries within the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). The Solow growth model carries an implication that some key macroeconomic aggregates will grow at the same rate indicating a "balanced growth". Stochastic versions. of the model interpret balanced growth as stationarity of some so-called "great ratios". They include consumption/income and investment/income ratios, considered in Kuznets' seminal contribution (1942) for the US economy in the early twentieth century. Although Kuznet dismissed international trade as being of negligible consequence, the set of ratios examined here in the case of SAARC countries, are extended to include a trade/income ratio, in recognition of the significant role now played by international trade. The Johansen (1988) and Johansen and Jusilius (1990) maximum likelihood method has been used for estimating and testing long-run steady-state relations in multivariate vector autoregressive models. The empirical support for the balanced growth hypothesis is very limited. Econometric methods that accommodate the impact of structural reforms on economic growth still find only weak evidence for the one-sector neoclassical growth model. The study also investigates the extent of "growth convergence"- a property of the Solow model, within SAARC, by examining the stationarity of relative per capita incomes assessed by unit root tests and permitting structural breaks. It additionally employs Phillips and SuI (2007, 2009) two-factor growth model and the "flexible Fourier trend" method developed by Enders and Lee (2012). The study makes an assessment of regional convergence in the SAARC countries and identifies the consequences of non-convergence and hence draws policy implications for economic integration in South Asia. The results based on data from 1960-2011 reveal that the per capita output is not converging. The key methodologies employed developed from Carlino and Mills (1993) with modification made to them by Li and Papell (1999); Philips and SuI (2007, 2009); Ender and Lee (2012). With or without structural breaks, analyses of the SAARC5 data suggest that per capita output is not converging in these countries.

This thesis postulates the annihilation of the poor as the authorised end of development. This circumstance, I contend, is an effect of the entanglement – that is, the mutual affectability (Barad 2007) – of the human and capital as descriptors of ethical and economic value, respectively. Accordingly, I suggest that the annihilation of the poor by capital under the sign of development is authorised as the preservation of value. I designate this as the postcolonial capitalist condition. The argument unfolds through encounters with three sites that have become metonymic with destruction wrought by development: the state response to peasant revolt against land expropriation in Nandigram, the Bhopal gas leak, and the recently emergent surrogacy market. I offer these as different instantiations of the annihilation of the poor, each of which gives lie to the recuperative myth of development. Here, annihilation proceeds by leaving a material trace upon the body. I follow this trace to argue the indispensability of the body in performing the ideological work of development – that is, to preserve an idealised appearance as human through the eradication of the poor that appear as subaltern – even as it establishes itself as an emancipatory truth. Thus, in this thesis I offer an analysis of the violence of capital not as socio-materially imposed (per Karl Marx) but rather as an onto-materially authorised (following Georges Bataille). As such, I seek to explicate the differential mattering of bodies – as both, appearance and significance – under development.

This thesis offers a perspective on why majority-poor democracies might fail to pursue pro-poor policies. In particular, it discusses why in Bihar, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) party led by Lalu Prasad Yadav, which claimed to represent the poor and under-privileged, did not claim and spend large amounts of centre–state fiscal transfers that could have reduced poverty, provided employment and benefitted core supporters. Despite this failure, the RJD and Yadav enjoyed repeated electoral success between 1990 and 2005, in a context of credible elections and a majority of poor voters. I have called this combination of events the ‘Bihar paradox'. I explore this paradox by: 1. Creating two panel data sets on fiscal transfers in the form of Centrally Sponsored Schemes and State Plan Allocations made from the Government of India to sixteen main states over an eight-year period from 1997-98 to 2004-05. 2. Using the panel data sets to show that, during this period: a) Poor states in India claimed and spent less of the centre–state fiscal transfers available to them than wealthier states b) Relative to other states, the Government of Bihar claimed and spent less fiscal transfers than expected of a state at its level of poverty. 3. Explaining how Yadav's electoral strategy contributed to this under-claiming and under-spending. For Yadav, the political imperative was to marginalize the upper castes and provide selective benefits to key supporters. This led to large numbers of public sector vacancies which eroded state administrative capacity in all but a few ‘pockets of productivity', which in turn led to poor results for general development outcomes. The Bihar story is relevant to areas of research variously labelled as ‘state-building', ‘capacity development' and ‘public sector reform'. It is another warning about how easy it is to foster pessimism by attributing governance problems in poor countries to deeply embedded historical or cultural factors, when they may have more immediate, political and tractable causes.