Economic growth in India: the role of physical and social infrastructure

We investigate the role of physical and social infrastructure in economic growth in India after controlling for other important variables such as investment, labour force, and trade, using the Two-Stage Least Squares (TSLS) and Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) techniques, for the period 1970 to 2006. In this context we develop a composite index of physical infrastructure stocks and examine its impact on output. We find that physical and social infrastructures have a significant positive impact on output apart from gross domestic capital formation and international trade. Further, the causality analysis supports the results, revealing unidirectional causality from infrastructure development and human capital to output growth in India.