Liberalisation and The Differential Conduct and Performance of Firms: A Study of the Indian Automobile Sector

This paper analyses the behaviour of Indian Automobile firms operating under regulated and liberal economic policy regimes. Results from the step-wise discriminant analysis presented in this paper reveal that the conduct and performance of firms in this sector differ significantly between the regulated [1985-86 to 1990-91] and liberal [1991-92 to 1995-96] economic policy regimes with respect to foreign equity participation, in-house R & D efforts, technology imports, capital intensity, advertisement, exports, growth and profits.