Person:
Nayyar, Gaurav
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Economic growth,
Structural transformation,
India,
Development Economics,
International Economics
Degrees
ORCID
External Links
Departments
Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Gaurav Nayyar is a Senior Economist in the Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions Vice Presidency at the World Bank, where he joined as a Young Professional in 2013. Previously, he was an Economics Affairs Officer in the Economic Research Division of the World Trade Organization, where he co-led the World Trade Report 2013, Factors Shaping the Future of World Trade. Gaurav’s research interests lie primarily in the areas of economic growth, structural transformation, trade, industrialization, and firm productivity, and he has published in a variety of academic journals on these issues. His previous books include Trouble in the Making? The Future of Manufacturing-Led Development (with Mary Hallward-Driemeier), and The Service Sector in India’s Development (published by Cambridge University Press). Gaurav holds a D.Phil in Economics from the University of Oxford, where he was a Dorothy Hodgkin Scholar. His other alma maters include the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Cambridge, and St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi.
Publication Search Results
1 - 5 of 5
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Publication
India's Services Sector Growth: The Impact of Services Trade on Non-tradable Services
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-06)This paper examines the effect of tradable services growth on non-tradable services across Indian districts. The analysis uses a shift-share “Bartik-type” instrumental variable, which relies on changes in foreign demand shocks for tradable services, weighted by the initial district employment shares in tradable services. Using multiple rounds of the Indian Economic Censuses, the findings show that an increase in tradable services employment leads to an increase in non-tradable services employment and increases the number of firms in non-tradable services. The evidence suggests that this positive impact is due to an increase in consumer demand for local non-tradable services that results from the growth in tradable services employment, and not due to sectoral linkages between tradable and non-tradable services sectors. The employment impact is much larger for female workers compared to male workers, and for the number of female-owned firms relative to male-owned firms. Further, the employment impact is only significant for small non-tradable service firms. -
Publication
FDI and the Skill Premium: Evidence from Emerging Economies
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-10)Foreign direct investment may play an important role in transferring technologies from high-income to emerging economies, which can lead to uneven effects on the wages of skilled and unskilled workers. This paper combines project-level data on greenfield foreign direct investment with household surveys to estimate the effects of foreign direct investment on the wage skill premium across sectors and regions in seven emerging economies (Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Mexico, the Philippines, South Africa, and Vietnam). The results suggest that foreign direct investment is associated with a higher probability of employment and higher wages for unskilled workers, relative to skilled workers, in six of the seven countries analyzed in this paper. Moreover, the effects of foreign direct investment on wages are relatively larger for unskilled women. -
Publication
When Face-to-Face Interactions Become an Occupational Hazard: Jobs in the Time of COVID-19
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-05)There is a crisis of demand brewing around the globe as social distancing becomes the norm to counter the COVID-19 outbreak. So, which parts of the economy are most in the line of fire? Looking at jobs that can be done at home or that require a high degree of face-to-face interactions with consumers can capture complementary but distinct mechanisms to assess this vulnerability. This paper uses data on 900 job titles from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) database for the United States to demonstrate that there is substantial heterogeneity in vulnerability across industries, income groups, and gender. First, industries vary in whether they emphasize face-to-face interactions and home-based work and the two do not always go hand-in-hand. Second, occupations that are less amenable to home-based work are largely concentrated among the lower wage deciles. Third, a larger share of women's employment is accounted for by occupations that are intensive in face-to-face interactions. -
Publication
Are the 'Poor' Getting Globalized?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-10)One reason that poor people may not capture the full benefit from participation in international markets is that the goods they produce tend to be subject to relatively high trade barriers. This paper analyzes market access barriers faced by households in different income deciles by matching household survey data from India based on the industrial classification of their economic activity. Tariffs in international markets are higher, and nontariff measures more numerous, on goods produced by poor workers than on goods produced by rich workers. Tariffs faced by exporters are higher on goods produced in rural and more remote areas than on those in urban centers, on goods produced by informal enterprises than by formal ones, and on goods produced by women than by men. Furthermore, the global reduction in tariffs from 1996 to 2012 failed to ameliorate these differences. How did we get there? Efforts to protect poor workers across countries resulted in a coordination problem. Indeed, tariff protection in China and the United States is higher on goods produced by poor workers than on goods produced by rich workers. Therefore, if poor workers are employed in similar sectors, then each country's attempts to protect its poor workers by imposing higher tariffs and more nontariff measures on such goods will reduce the access of all poor workers to international markets, and thus limit the gains from trade. -
Publication
India's Internal Labor Migration Paradox: The Statistical and the Real
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-02)Internal labor migration rates in India have been largely static and low in recent times compared with those in other countries. This is a cause for concern because internal migration for economic reasons can promote the agglomeration of economic activity in more productive locations and directly contribute to reducing poverty through remittances. New evidence based on the India Human Development Survey, which provides a more recent source of data compared with the Census and other household surveys, shows that labor mobility is higher than previously estimated -- the stock of labor migrants increased from 16 million in 2004-05 to 60 million in 2011–12. The absolute number of circular migrants, at more than 200 million in 2011-12, is also much higher than previously documented estimates. Tracking the same households between 2004–05 and 2011-12, empirical analysis based on the India Human Development Survey highlights several socioeconomic factors associated with the migration decision: household income, the availability of information, as well as community networks in source and destination areas. There is also a possible administrative dimension to interstate migration barriers, owing to domicile provisions for work and study, lack of portability of social benefits, and legal and other entitlements upon relocation.