Impact of reforms on plant-level productivity and technical efficiency: evidence from the Indian manufacturing sector

It is generally believed that the structural reforms that usher in competition and force companies to become more efficient were introduced later in India following the macroeconomic crisis in 1991. However, whether the post-1991 growth is an outcome of more efficient use of resources or greater use of factor inputs, especially capital, remains an open empirical question. In this paper, we use plant-level data from 1989-90 and 2000-01 to address this question. Our results indicate that while there was an increase in the productivity of factor inputs during the 1990s, most of the growth in value added is explained by growth in the use of factor inputs. We also find that median technical efficiency declined in all but one of the industries between the two years, and change in technical efficiency explains a very small proportion in the change in gross value added.