Fabrizio Zilibotti presents research on unequal gains from India’s service sector growth
The EGC affiliate and Tuntex Professor of International and Development Economics discussed his research, co-authored with Tianyu Fan and Michael Peters of Yale, which uses Indian household data to propose a new model for estimating the distribution of service-sector welfare gains for the Foundation for Economic Growth and Welfare (EGROW) webinar series.
Growing Like India: The Unequal Effects of Service-Led Growth
Who ultimately benefits from growth in services? How do we measure productivity growth in non-tradable sectors like retail, restaurants, or residential real estate? EGC affiliate Fabrizio Zilibotti of Yale Economics aimed to answer questions like these with a recent presentation that highlighted his joint research with Tianyu Fan and Michael Peters of Yale.
Zilibotti’s presentation focused on a new model he developed with Fan and Peters, which analyzes household income data to assess how the welfare gains from services-led growth are distributed by income level. Fan, Peters, and Zilibotti measured changes in Indian living standards from 1987 to 2011, a period when India’s services sector underwent rapid productivity growth. They found that this growth did contribute to aggregate welfare gains, but that high-income households in urban areas received more benefits than lower-income households. This research is forthcoming in Econometrica.
EGROW is a research-oriented think tank that conducts policy-related work in India and across South Asia, with a focus on understanding the macroeconomic factors behind economic growth and its effects on public welfare.