Publication: Identifying the Economic Potential of Indian Districts
Loading...
Date
2016-04
ISSN
Published
2016-04
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Despite its rapid growth in recent decades, GDP per capita in India remains at a relatively low level by international standards, and the country continues to be marked by large subnational disparities in levels of well-being. These large disparities naturally lead to interest in India’s spatial landscape of potential for economic development. Against this backdrop, this paper presents the results of an analysis of underlying variations in economic potential across Indian districts, where economic potential is defined as the extent to which a district possesses factors that are important determinants of the ability to experience a high level of productivity. The analysis is based on a simple composite Economic Potential Index, which is constructed from variables for which robust evidence exists of their importance as determinants of local productivity. From the analysis, a picture emerges of a heterogeneous landscape of economic potential characterized by strong geographic clustering of districts. The paper also reveals particularly high levels of underperformance, relative to potential, for districts in Uttar Pradesh.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Roberts, Mark. 2016. Identifying the Economic Potential of Indian Districts. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7623. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24165 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication Dynamic, High-Resolution Wealth Measurement in Data-Scarce Environments(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-06)Accurate and comprehensive measurement of household livelihoods is critical for monitoring progress toward poverty alleviation and targeting social assistance programs for those who most need it. However, the high cost of traditional data collection has historically made comprehensive measurement a difficult task. This paper evaluates alternative satellite-based deep learning approaches using detailed household census extracts from four African countries to accelerate progress toward comprehensive, fine-scale, and dynamic measurement of asset wealth at scale. The results indicate that transformer architectures solve multiple open measurement problems, by providing the most accurate measurement of local-level variation in household asset wealth across countries and cities, as well as changes in household asset wealth over time. Experiments that artificially restrict data availability show the model’s ability to achieve high performance with limited data. The proposed approach demonstrates the promise of combining satellite imagery, publicly available geo-features, and new deep learning architectures for hyperlocal and dynamic measurement of wealth in data-scarce environments.Publication Firm-Level Climate Change Adaptation(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-10)Are firms adapting to climate change? This paper studies this question by combining geocoded World Bank Enterprise Survey data with spatially granular weather data to estimate temperature response functions for nearly 160,000 firms in 134 countries over a 15-year period. Our results show that market imperfections in low- and middle-income countries constrain firms’ ability to adapt. Small and medium-size firms in low- and low-middle income countries are most vulnerable, with revenues declining by 12 percent in years with temperatures 0.5◦C above historical averages. The impact is equally strong for manufacturing and services firms and result from declines in labor productivity and wages. Heat-sensitive sectors and less resilient firms are more severely affected, reinforcing the causal interpretation. Unique firm-level information on policy constraints including limited financing, burdensome regulations, and unsafe conditions suggest that such factors raise adaptation costs, undermining economic resilience to climate change.Publication Beyond the AI Divide(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-24)This paper examines global disparities in artificial intelligence preparedness, using the 2023 Artificial Intelligence Preparedness Index developed by the International Monetary Fund alongside the multidimensional Economic Complexity Index. The proposed methodology identifies both global and local overperformers by comparing actual artificial intelligence readiness scores to predictions based on economic complexity, offering a comprehensive assessment of national artificial intelligence capabilities. The findings highlight the varying significance of regulation and ethics frameworks, digital infrastructure, as well as human capital and labor market development in driving artificial intelligence overperformance across different income levels. Through case studies, including Singapore, Northern Europe, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Ghana, Rwanda, and emerging demographic giants like China and India, the analysis illustrates how even resource-constrained nations can achieve substantial artificial intelligence advancements through strategic investments and coherent policies. The study underscores the need for offering actionable insights to foster peer learning and knowledge-sharing among countries. It concludes with recommendations for improving artificial intelligence preparedness metrics and calls for future research to incorporate cognitive and cultural dimensions into readiness frameworks.Publication Indigenous peoples, land and conflict in Mindanao, Philippines(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-02-12)This article explores the links between conflict, land and indigenous peoples in several regions of Mindano, the Philippines, notorious for their levels of poverty and conflict. The analysis takes advantage of the unprecedented concurrence of data from the most recent, 2020, census; an independent conflict data monitor for Mindanao; and administrative sources on ancestral land titling for indigenous peoples in the Philippines. While evidence elsewhere compellingly links land titling with conflict reduction, a more nuanced story emerges in the Philippines. Conflicts, including land- and resource-related conflicts, are generally less likely in districts (barangays) with higher shares of indigenous peoples. Ancestral domain areas also have a lower likelihood for general conflict but a higher likelihood for land-related conflict. Ancestral domains titling does not automatically solve land-related conflicts. When administrative delays take place (from cumbersome bureaucratic processes, insufficient resources and weak institutional capacity), titling processes may lead to sustained, rather than decreased, conflict.Publication Who on Earth Is Using Generative AI ?(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-22)Leveraging unconventional data, including website traffic data and Google Trends, this paper unveils the real-time usage patterns of generative artificial intelligence tools by individuals across countries. The paper also examines country-level factors driving the uptake and early impacts of generative artificial intelligence on online activities. As of March 2024, the top 40 generative artificial intelligence tools attract nearly 3 billion visits per month from hundreds of millions of users. ChatGPT alone commanded 82.5 percent of the traffic, yet reaching only one-eightieth of Google’s monthly visits. Generative artificial intelligence users skew young, highly educated, and male, particularly for video generation tools, with usage patterns strongly indicating productivity-related activities. Generative artificial intelligence has achieved unprecedentedly rapid global diffusion, reaching almost all economies worldwide within 16 months of ChatGPT’s release. Middle-income economies have disproportionately high adoption of generative artificial intelligence relative to their economic scale, now contribute more than 50 percent of global traffic, while low-income economies contribute less than 1 percent. Regression analysis reveals that income level, share of youth population, digital infrastructure, specialization in high-skill tradable services, English proficiency, and human capital are strongly correlated with higher uptake of generative artificial intelligence. The paper also documents disruptions in online traffic patterns and emphasizes the need for targeted investments in digital infrastructure and skills development to harness the full potential of artificial intelligence.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Citations
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Urbanization beyond Municipal Boundaries : Nurturing Metropolitan Economies and Connecting Peri-Urban Areas in India(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-02-21)The report is organized into three chapters: chapter two looks at the pace and patterns of India's urbanization, providing a 100-year perspective on demographic shifts and a 20-year perspective on the spatial distribution of jobs across India's portfolio of settlements. The review is based on a careful, spatially detailed analysis of data from economic and demographic censuses, annual surveys of industry, national sample surveys, and special surveys of freight transport. This chapter provides diagnostics on whether Indian industry is adequately exploiting agglomeration economies and whether there are hints of specific barriers to the natural tendency of standardized industry to reshuffle from large metropolitan areas to smaller urban areas. Chapter three examines specific policy issues and investment bottlenecks that are curbing the pace and benefits of urbanization in India. The policy issues relate to land markets and housing, connectivity (within and between cities), and access to basic services. The purpose of this analysis is to unravel the specific distortions that may be preventing India from reaping the entire range of benefits of urbanization. Chapter four provides some options for policy reform, distilling lessons from relevant international experience. It provides options for establishing the 'rules of the game' that can define the workings of land and property markets as well as coordination of land use and infrastructure in cities. This chapter also provides a framework for policy makers to identify the role of regulatory and price reform in expanding infrastructure services and to make investments that enhance capacity.Publication Handshake, No. 4 (January 2012)(International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC, 2012-01)This issue includes the following headings: mass rapid transit: a tool for urban expansion; financing: beyond sovereign guarantees; and low-income housing: lessons from Latin America.Publication Mapping Serbia's Growth(Washington, DC, 2010-03-25)Big cities are becoming even bigger and these have been and will be the key drivers of economic growth in Serbia. Belgrade, Novi Sad, Nis and Kragujevac, Serbia's four largest cities contributed to about 60 percent of the increase of value added in the economy over the period 2001-2008. These four largest cities in 2008 accounted for about two thirds of country s economy. Spatial characteristics of foreign direct investments inflow, privatization process and location of export oriented sectors, indicate significant concentration. FDI and privatization were attracted by largest cities, though the proximity to the key transit routes, like Corridor 10, is also important for making decision where to invest. Export is concentrated in several places, depending on the type of production, and proximity of major export markets contributed to concentration of export near the borders of the EU (i.e., Hungary) and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the second most important export market for Serbia. Spatially uneven growth caused differences in living standards. Wages did not play significant role, as migrations did in adjusting differences in economic development among regions. Living standards are lowest in southern Serbia which has on average negative growth rates over this period and where both unemployment and poverty are highest. The last section of the report discusses some of the possible options for policy makers as response to spatially biased growth.Publication Planning, Connecting, and Financing Cities--Now : Priorities for City Leaders(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-01-21)This report provides Mayors and other policymakers with a policy framework and diagnostic tools to anticipate and implement strategies that can avoid their cities from locking into irreversible physical and social structures. At the core of the policy framework are the three main dimensions of urban development. · Planning— where the focus is on making land transactions easier, and making land use regulations more responsive to emerging needs especially to coordinate land use planning with infrastructure, natural resource management, and risks from hazards; · Connecting—where the focus is on making a city’s markets (for labor, goods, and services) more accessible to neighborhoods in the city and to other cities. Here the focus is also on investing in public transport, and pricing private transport fully; and · Financing— where the focus is on how a city can leverage its own assets to finance new assets for example, through land value capture, establishing creditworthiness for local governments and utilities to access domestic debt and bond markets and how to set clear and consistent rules to attract private investors to create jobs in cities. This report also distills lessons from prototypes urbanization diagnostics which have been piloted to reflect challenges for countries at nascent (Uganda, Vietnam), intermediate (China, India, Indonesia), and mature (Brazil, Colombia, South Korea, Turkey) urbanization. These diagnostics under the World Bank's Urbanization Review program have engaged strategic counterparts, such as those in national ministries of finance and planning, in thinking about policy choices that influence urbanization and city development.Publication Climate Change Impact and Adaptation Study for Bangkok Metropolitan Region : Final Report(World Bank, 2009-03-01)This report is the primary output from the climate change impact and adaptation study for the Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR) produced for the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) with financial support provided by the World Bank. The report concerns climate change, and provides an analysis of climate change impacts and adaptation options for the BMR. In addition to the more general matters on the physical setting and socioeconomics of BMR, the report considers a number of issues related to climate change in detail. These are: changes in the inundation pattern, and impact on the population and socioeconomics, and coping mechanisms to deal with the changed situation.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
No results found.