Industrial Concentration in a Liberalising Economy: a Study of Indian Manufacturing

This paper studies industrial concentration in Indian manufacturing sectors over the period 1970 to 1999. Given that Indian industry was highly regulated till the mid-1980s, the market structure in most manufacturing sectors was largely shaped by government policy. Deregulation after 1985 allowed greater scope for competitive processes, so that concentration levels are now more likely to be determined by industry characteristics rather than government policy. We find that, on the whole, concentration levels were indeed more significantly related to industry characteristics after deregulation. However, even after controlling for these characteristics, there is considerable heterogeneity in the patterns of concentration in individual industries.