Title: Output, employment and productivity: contribution of different technology intensive manufacturing industries of India

Authors: Kawaljeet Kaur; Swati Mehta

Addresses: Punjab School of Economics, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, India ' Punjab School of Economics, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, India

Abstract: Structural shift in manufacturing sector from low-technology intensive industries towards high-technology intensive industries is seen as critical for the development process. This is based on the argument that high-tech industries are highly innovative and have potential of high growth and productivity. The study has examined the same argument by analysing the real contribution of different technology intensive manufacturing sub-sectors in terms of output, employment and productivity by using firm level data drawn from CMIE Prowess for the period 1999–2000 to 2015–2016. Results show that high-tech oriented structural change is present in Indian manufacturing sector but it is very slow and small. There is not much variation in growth rates of high-tech industries and its counterparts. The finding casts doubt on the wisdom of targeting high-tech industries only because high-tech industries are overrepresented as high growth industries but in Indian context other sub-sectors (medium low-tech and low-tech industries) are also contributing to substantial portion of aggregated growth of Indian manufacturing sector in terms of output, employment and productivity.

Keywords: total factor productivity; technology; structural change; high-tech manufacturing firms; low-tech manufacturing firms; India.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEPEE.2019.104639

International Journal of Economic Policy in Emerging Economies, 2019 Vol.12 No.5, pp.466 - 489

Received: 05 Jun 2018
Accepted: 02 Jun 2019

Published online: 24 Jan 2020 *

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