Suchergebnisse

Software and globalization provide both opportunities and challenges to developing countries. Whether these opportunities are successfully utilized depends upon the availability of infrastructure and educational skills, a conclusion arrived at by many development debates over the past few decades. We will consider the impact of the software industry on development, drawing on the case of India. We show that in India, a number of factors have come together to contribute to the success of this industry, in spite of relatively poor infrastructure and education levels. In this case, however, the inadequacy of infrastructure and education have manifested themselves in an uneven spread of the benefits of this industry, leading to enclave-type development in urban centres in the southern and western parts of the country. While this is improving, the government has to take an active role to ensure a more even spread of the benefits accruing from this industry.

Can changes in industry structure be characterized by movements towards a long‐run concentration ratio (CR)? This paper estimates an error correction model for 33 industries in India for the period 1974–85, using nonlinear estimation methods. The results indicate that structural change in India is composed both of significant changes towards the long‐run CR and of significant changes of the long‐run CR. The adjustment towards the long‐run CR seems to be faster in India than in most Western studies. In spite of this, it is below 0.5 in most industries, indicating that even after 11 years, all the difference between actual and long‐run CRs is not eroded and 'excess' market shares persist in most industries. Across industries, speeds of adjustment are higher in industries with high profit margins and lower in industries which are reserved for the public sector.

AbstractIndian indentured labour migration followed slavery in providing cheap labour to British plantation colonies. To make this migration characteristically distinct from slavery, the workers were offered a subsidized trip back at the end of the indenture period. However, despite this guaranteed and subsidized return passage, only about a third of the workers returned to India. In this article, we consider the role of caste in the decision to return home using data from ship registers for more than 16 000 Indian indentured workers in British Guiana between 1872 and 1911. Our results indicate that individuals from very low castes were significantly less likely to return home in comparison to other caste groups. We argue that this was because while caste hierarchy played a very significant role in every aspect of the workers' lives back in India, their lives in the plantation economies did not allow the reproduction of caste hierarchies. Low caste workers who stayed on in British Guiana were therefore able to escape the unfreedom of caste. This trend is not robust for other caste groups. While the association of higher caste groups and return is positive and significant, the significance disappears when we include economic conditions.