Our analysis aims to further the understanding of the factors that determine economic activity and productivity growth at the regional level. More specifically, we compile three essays investigating some of the sources that may be held responsible for the differential economic performance of regions in India and the UK, while providing evidence drawn from two of the fastest growing sectors in each country: Indian registered manufacturing and the UK service sector. India is currently one of the top-10 largest economies in the world while exhibiting the second largest GOP amongst emerging economies. At an average rate of GOP growth between six and seven per cent per year, India is forecasted to take over Italy's position in G7 by 2016, and shortly later achieve levels of domestic output comparable to those of France (2019) and United Kingdom (2023). Despite its spectacular confederate economic performance, however, the regional disparity in domestic state product has widened significantly, especially following the post reform (1991) era. Our first two essays discuss these disparities and develop two simple theoretical frameworks which are then tested out rigorously using cutting-edge econometric techniques, and snowing how the distribution of national investment in infrastructure across states should be expected to affect overall economic activity. Our results indicate that investment in infrastructure is a major determinant of regional economic performance and a central factor on the decision of firms to locate across states. Finally, the third essay discusses the distribution of economic acti~ity in the UK, focusing on a sector that has so far failed to attract much research attention, possibly due to the, till recently, limited availability of usable data. Using a simple theoretical model of Hotelling type as a general guide, we exploit firm-level data (50,000 observations) for the years 1997-2003 to show how the existence of knowledge spillovers leads to the concentration of dqmestic retailers in regions where the presence of Multinational Enterprisers (MNE) is most eminent. Our results confirin the existence of positive spillovers, which we then find to be local in nature and to increase with the absorptive capacity of firms.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:446323 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Vasilakos, Nicholas |
| Publisher | University of Birmingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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