Person:
Lall, Somik Vinay
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Urban economics,
Public finance,
Regional development,
Infrastructure economics,
Spatial analysis,
Territorial development
Degrees
ORCID
Departments
Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
February 1, 2023
Biography
Somik V. Lall is the World Bank’s global lead on territorial development solutions and a lead economist for urban development in its Global Practice for Urban, Resilience and Land. Mr. Lall joined the World Bank in 1999 and today is a recognized expert on job creation and productivity in cities, development of lagging areas, and enhancing economic outcomes with transport connectivity and advises national and sub-national governments on key policy issues. Somik has led the World Bank’s global research program on urbanization and spatial development and previously founded the Urbanization Reviews program. He leads a Global Solutions Group that focuses on developing spatially coordinated multi-sector investments to support development of specific areas.
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 66
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Publication
Leveraging Land to Enable Urban Transformation : Lessons from Global Experience
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01)Around the world, in both developed and developing countries, policy makers use a variety of tools to manage and accommodate urban growth and redevelopment. Government officials have three main concerns in terms of land policy: (i) accommodating urban expansion, (ii) providing infrastructure, and (iii) managing density. Together, the planning for infrastructure and urban expansion, land use, and density policies combine to shape the spatial structure of cities. This paper reviews global experience on using land based instruments to accommodate urban development and financing infrastructure. The review suggests that urban transformation is most efficient when land markets are fluid, particularly when they are grounded in strong institutions that (i) assign and protect property rights, (ii) enable independent valuation and public dissemination of land values across uses, and (iii) enable the judicial system to handle disputes that may arise in the process. -
Publication
Tenure, Divesity, and Commitment: Community Participation for Urban Service Provision
(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2002-06)What factors influence community participation in the delivery of urban services? In particular, does security of tenure enhance the probability of participation as it provides individuals with incentives to act collectively in pursuit of a common objective? And are collective efforts less likely to succeed when there is a high degree of heterogeneity in culture or endowments among community members? The authors use household level survey data for Bangalore, India, to show that tenure security has a significant impact on the willingness of residents to participate even when neighborhoods are diverse in terms of their cultural background and welfare status. Their findings suggest that participation is possible in heterogeneous communities when it is a means to a common objective and not a goal by itself. -
Publication
Location and Welfare in Cities: Impacts of Policy Interventions on the Urban Poor
(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-05)Informal settlements are an integral part of the urban landscape in developing countries. These settlements are widely distributed within cities, including central business centers and peripheral areas with environment hazards. In most cases, residents of these settlements do not have access to basic public services and amenities. In this paper, the authors examine the impact of interventions, such as upgrading basic services and resettlement policies, on the welfare of residents of these informal settlements, who are typically the urban poor. To examine these interventions, they estimate models of residential location choice and allow households to be sensitive to commuting costs to work, demand for public services, and preferences for community composition. The authors' empirical analysis is based on recently collected survey data from Pune, India, and shows that poor households prefer to live close to work and in communities that consist of people sharing common socio-demographic characteristics. From the perspective of households living in informal settlements, upgrading settlements in the original place is welfare enhancing. If a household must be relocated, it greatly prefers to be moved to a community that resembles its current community. -
Publication
"Learning by Dining" : Informal Networks and Productivity in Mexican Industry
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2002-02)The authors analyze the determinants of firm productivity in a group of Mexican firms. In particular, they test the contribution of external factors such as trade and knowledge diffusion, the availability of infrastructure, informal knowledge exchange, competitive environment, and business regulatory climate. The authors find that one factor consistently emerges as an important proximate source of productivity-access to informal networks. Interaction in the form of "business lunches" with local buyers and suppliers, competitors, government officials, and other professionals have a significant and positive effect on a firm's productivity. Access to regulators and agents of backward and forward linkages are important in settings where information on business practices and regulations is not publicly disclosed. The results complement predictions of traditional growth theory-in addition to technology and learning being the driving force of firm productivity, proximity to influential individuals who can grant favors or provide information advantage on business and trade practices have significant productivity impacts. -
Publication
Location, Concentration, and Performance of Economic Activity in Brazil
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2004-04)What are the prospects for economic development in lagging sub-national regions? What are the roles of public infrastructure investments and fiscal incentives in influencing the location and performance of industrial activity? To examine these questions, the authors estimate a spatial profit function for industrial activity in Brazil that explicitly incorporates infrastructure improvements and fiscal incentives in the cost structure of individual firms. The authors use firm level data from the 2001 annual industrial survey along with spatially disaggregated regional data and find that there are considerable cost savings from being located in areas with relatively lower transport costs to reach large markets. In comparison, fiscal incentives, such as tax expenditures, have modest effects in terms of influencing firm level costs. Although the results suggest that firms benefit from being in locations with good access to markets, the authors do not suggest that improving interregional connectivity would necessarily assist lagging regions. In the short run, improving interregional connectivity implicitly reduces a natural tariff barrier so firms currently serving large markets and benefiting from economies of scale can more easily expand into new markets in competition with local producers. Therefore, producers in the leading regions can crowd out local producers, which would be detrimental for local production and employment in the lagging region. -
Publication
Policy Reform, Economic Growth, and the Digital Divide : An Econometric Analysis
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2001-03)Rapid growth of Internet use in high-income economies, has raised the specter of a "digital divide" that will marginalize developing countries, because they can neither afford Internet access, nor use it effectively when it is available. Using a new cross-country data set, the authors investigate two proximate determinants of the digital divide: Internet intensity (Internet subscriptions per telephones mainline), and access to telecom services. Surprisingly, they find no gap in Internet intensity. When differences in urbanization, and competition policy are controlled for, low-income countries have intensities as high as those of industrial countries. While income does not seem to matter in this context, competition policy matters a great deal. Low-income countries with high World Bank ratings for competition policy, have significantly higher Internet intensities. The authors' findings on Internet intensity implies that the digital divide is not really new, but reflects a persistent gap in the availability of mainline telephones services. After identifying mobile telephones as a promising new platform for Internet access, they use panel data to study the determinants of mobile telephone diffusion during the past decade. Their results show that income explains part of the diffusion lag for poor countries, but they also highlight the critical role of policy. Developing countries whose policies promote economic growth, and private sector competition, have experienced much more rapid diffusion of mobile telephone services. Simulations based on the econometric results, suggest that feasible reforms could sharply narrow the digital divide during the next decade for many countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The authors' review of the literature, also suggests that direct access promotion would yield substantial benefits for poor households, and that cost-effective intervention strategies are now available. -
Publication
Perspectives on the Sources of Heterogeneity in Indian Industry
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2000-11)The authors examine technical efficiency variation across four industrial sectors in India, using a stochastic production frontier technique. The results are comparable to technical efficiency distribution patterns obtained in other countries. The authors examine heterogeneity in firm-level efficiency against internal, firm-level characteristics and against external characteristics (industry and location). The results suggest that managerial effectiveness significantly influences efficiency and that considerable benefits derive from location within established industrial clusters for particular industries. The methodology and findings indicate that the study of industry-specific technical efficiency patterns is a useful analytical tool for tracking domestic firms' response to liberalization and the advance of market forces. An important policy implication of the authors' results: There is considerable room for efficiency gains through better organization and management of production processes and improved supply chain management, even in the highly organized corporate sector. These gains could be achieved by purely internal learning processes with no extra investment in physical plant or equipment, or with the help of outside consultants, or through business alliances with partners from industrial countries (a rising trend). The results also show that greater technical efficiency correlates with better energy use and higher investments in plant management. How firms can be induced to undertake such investments in the "software" of production is an important issue. Liberalization and globalization are likely to bring significant productivity gains even in low-technology industries as managers gear up to meet the challenges of competition. -
Publication
Metropolitan Industrial Clusters : Patterns and Processes
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-06)Where do industries locate within a metropolitan area? Do different industrial sectors have different patterns of location/clustering? Can these patterns be understood with reference to industry characteristics? What is the geographical relationship between clusters of different types of industry? To what extent do localization economies influence the clustering process? These questions are investigated with geographically disaggregated industry location and size data from Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai. Chakravorty, Koo, and Lall analyze eight industrial sectors (food/beverages, textiles, leather, printing/publishing, chemicals, metals, machinery, and electrical/electronics) for evidence of global and local clustering, and distinguish between and test for co-clustering and co-location of industries. The results suggest an evolutionary model of industry location in mixed rather than specialized industrial districts. There is little evidence of localization economies from labor markets or buyer-supplier networks. The authors suggest that land use policy is the key variable influencing the intra-metropolitan spatial distribution of industry. -
Publication
Diversity Matters : The Economic Geography of Industry Location in India
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-06)How does economic geography influence industrial production and thereby affect industrial location decisions and the spatial distribution of development? For manufacturing industry, what are the externalities that matter, and to what extent? Are these externalities spatially localized? The authors answer these questions by analyzing the influence of economic geography on the cost structure of manufacturing firms by firm size for eight industry sectors in India. The economic geography factors include market access and local and urban externalities-which are concentrations of own-industry firms, concentrations of buyer-supplier links, and industrial diversity at the district (local) level. The authors find that industrial diversity is the only economic geography variable that has a significant, consistent, and substantial cost-reducing effect for firms, particularly small firms. This finding calls into question the fundamental assumptions regarding localization economies and raises further concerns on the industrial development prospects of lagging regions in developing countries. -
Publication
Information-Based Instruments for Improved Urban Management
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-03)The task of urban managers is to ensure the provision of basic urban services, such as water, waste removal, security, transport, and an environment conducive to economic activity, while maintaining fiscal sustainability of city operations. City managers in developing countries face increasing pressure in achieving these goals because of rapid urbanization, the larger responsibilities following decentralization, and the economic challenges of globalization. Based on experience in Bangalore, India, the authors argue that effective, forward-looking urban management requires a much better information infrastructure than is currently available in most cities.