Highway to Success: The Impact of the Golden Quadrilateral Project for the Location and Performance of Indian Manufacturing

Journal Article
Published on 1 March 2016

Abstract

In this paper, published in The Economic Journal, Ghani, Grover Goswami and Kerr (2016) investigate the impact of transport infrastructure on the organisation and efficiency of manufacturing activity. The Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) project upgraded a central highway network in India. Manufacturing activity grew disproportionately along the network. These findings hold in straight-line IV frameworks and are not present on a second highway that was planned to be upgraded at the same time as GQ but subsequently delayed. Both entrants and incumbents facilitated the output growth, with scaling among entrants being important. The upgrades facilitated better industrial sorting along the network and improved the allocative efficiency of industries initially positioned on GQ.

Authors

Ejaz Ghani

World Bank

Arti Grover Goswami

World Bank

William Kerr

Massachusetts Institute of Technology