How Productive is Public Investment? Evidence from Formal and Informal Production In India

This paper uses firm-level data on formal and informal production in the manufacturing sector in India to examine the sectoral consequences of government investment in public infrastructure. The average output elasticity of the flow of public investment for an informal sector firm is three times smaller than its formal counterpart. For the accumulated stock of public capital, this difference increases to a factor of seven. However, the sectoral size distribution of firms matters for the effects associated with public investment: for the formal sector, there is very little variation in the output elasticity of public investment across the size distribution of firms. On the other hand, the output elasticity for informal sector firms is strictly increasing in firm size. Further, the relationship between public investment and capital intensity in production for formal sector firms is negative, especially for firms in the middle of the size distribution. By contrast, the corresponding relationship is strictly positive and increasing with firm size for the informal sector, indicating strong complementarities.