Growing Like India—the Unequal Effects of Service‐Led Growth
提出新方法估算服务业生产率增长，发现印度1987-2011年间非贸易消费服务业的生产率提升推动了结构转型和生活水平提高，但福利收益主要偏向高收入城市居民。
Structural transformation in most currently developing countries takes the form of a rapid rise in services but limited industrialization. In this paper, we propose a new methodology to structurally estimate productivity growth in service industries that circumvents the notorious difficulties in measuring quality improvements. In our theory, the expansion of the service sector is both a consequence—due to income effects—and a cause—due to productivity growth—of the development process. We estimate the model using Indian household data. We find that productivity growth in nontradable consumer services such as retail, restaurants, or residential real estate was an important driver of structural transformation and rising living standards between 1987 and 2011. However, the welfare gains were heavily skewed toward high‐income urban dwellers.