Highway to success
Subtitle: the impact of the Golden Quadrilateral Project for the location and performance of Indian manufacturing
By: Ejaz Ghani, Arti Grover Goswami, William R. Kerr
Contributors: Goswami, Arti Grover, 1978-; Kerr, William R. (William Robert); Harvard Business School
Series: Working paper / Harvard Business School -- 13-040; Working paper (Harvard Business School) -- 13-040
Publisher: Harvard Business School
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Boston ]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 25
Description: We investigate the impact of the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) highway project on the Indian organized manufacturing sector using enterprise data. The GQ project upgraded the quality and width of 5,846 km of roads in India. We use a difference-in-difference estimation strategy to compare non-nodal districts based upon their distance from the highway system. We find several positive effects for non-nodal districts located 0-10 km from GQ that are not present in districts 10-50 km away, most notably higher entry rates and increases in plant productivity. These results are not present for districts located on another major highway system, the North-South East-West corridor (NS-EW). Improvements for portions of the NS-EW system were planned to occur at the same time as GQ but were subsequently delayed. Additional tests show that the GQ project's effect operates in part through a stronger sorting of land-intensive industries from nodal districts to non-nodal districts located on the GQ network. The GQ upgrades further helped spread economic activity to moderate-density districts and intermediate cities.
Notes: "November 2012" -- Publisher's website.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 22-24).