Trade Liberalization, Poverty, and Inequality: Evidence from Indian Districts
Trade Liberalization, Poverty, and Inequality: Evidence from Indian Districts
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贸易自由化、贫困和不平等：来自印度地区的证据
DOI：
10.3386/w11614
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发表时间：
2005
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
P. Topalova
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
P. Topalova
虽然人们普遍认为贸易自由化会提高国内生产总值，但人们对贸易自由化对贫困和不平等的影响知之甚少。本文利用1991年印度在很大程度上由外部因素刺激的急剧贸易自由化来衡量贸易自由化对印度各地区贫困和不平等的因果影响。印度各地区自由化前工业构成的差异以及各行业自由化程度的差异，使得可以采取区别对待的办法，确定某些地区是否从自由化中获益更多，或承担了不成比例的负担。在自由化程度较高的工业集中的农村地区，贸易自由化对贫困发生率和贫困程度的降低幅度较小，使印度1990年代在减贫方面取得的进展倒退了约15%。结果是强大的改革前的趋势，收敛性和随时间变化的影响，初始地区的具体特点。在印度所有邦的抽样中，城市和农村地区的不平等现象没有受到影响。调查结果与印度各地区和各行业的要素流动性极其有限有关。研究结果与贸易的具体因素模型相一致，表明为了尽量减少不平等的社会成本，可能需要采取额外的政策，将自由化的一些收益从赢家重新分配给受益较少的人。
Although it is commonly believed that trade liberalization results in higher GDP, little is known about its effects on poverty and inequality. This paper uses the sharp trade liberalization in India in 1991, spurred to a large extent by external factors, to measure the causal impact of trade liberalization on poverty and inequality in districts in India. Variation in pre-liberalization industrial composition across districts in India and the variation in the degree of liberalization across industries allow for a difference-in-difference approach, establishing whether certain areas benefited more from, or bore a disproportionate share of the burden of liberalization. In rural districts where industries more exposed to liberalization were concentrated, poverty incidence and depth decreased by less as a result of trade liberalization, a setback of about 15 percent of India's progress in poverty reduction over the 1990s. The results are robust to pre-reform trends, convergence and time-varying effects of initial district-specific characteristics. Inequality was unaffected in the sample of all Indian states in both urban and rural areas. The findings are related to the extremely limited mobility of factors across regions and industries in India. The findings, consistent with a specific factors model of trade, suggest that to minimize the social costs of inequality, additional policies may be needed to redistribute some of the gains of liberalization from winners to those who do not benefit as much.