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While promoting manufacturing growth is imperative to boost economic growth, potential adverse consequences on natural resources and ecology have created sustainability-related concerns and challenges. In India, with the reform processes deepening further and the business environment becoming more market-oriented over the years, the adoption of appropriate measures for sustainable manufacturing growth under such conditions would require a deeper investigation of the underlying dynamics, particularly to address the impacts of external shocks. This is especially true when external shocks alter market dynamics and, hence, input is used significantly in the manufacturing sector. Given this backdrop, the present paper examines how the major external shocks to the Indian economy during in the post-reform era have altered the resource use patterns in selected manufacturing industries. The paper uses secondary data collected from the KLEMS database of the Reserve Bank of India for the period from 1980–81 to 2019–20 and applies descriptive statistics and econometric techniques to address the research objective. It is found that energy intensity, vertical integration, capital intensity, and rate of growth of total factor productivity decreased over the decades, whereas labour productivity experienced an increasing trend in most industries. However, the trends are mixed in the case of material intensity. Further, the regression results indicate significant effects of external shocks on resource use, factor productivity, and structural changes. There are also industry-specific differences in the nature and extent of such changes. Hence, a deeper investigation of the underlying factors and impacts at a disaggregate industry level is necessary to draw more robust insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study estimates the contribution of gendered social norms in explaining the gender gap in productivity of unorganised manufacturing firms. Restrictions on mobility and burden of household work mean that female firm-owners primarily operate from their household premises. Using data from unorganised firms operating in the manufacturing sector in India, this paper finds gender gap in firm productivity. The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition at mean show that despite controlling for size of the firm, assets and other conventional factors, the location of a female proprietary firm within the household premises of the owner explains 19% of the observed gender gap in productivity. The RIF decomposition results show that at the different quartiles, this contribution varies from 19 to 36% of the composition effect. The evidence suggests that the persistence of the gender gap in firm productivity is associated with the persistence of gendered social norms. Plain English Summary: Almost 95% of female owned firms in the unorganised manufacturing sector in India operate from within the household premises, due to prevalent gendered social norms. These norms put the responsibility of unpaid household work solely on women and impose mobility restrictions. This paper examines whether restrictive social norms contribute towards the gender gap in firm productivity. I find that that the location of these firms within the household restricts them from expanding, as well as contribute to prevalent the gender gap in productivity and incomes generated from proprietary firms operating in the unorganised manufacturing sector. Newer policies supporting women's mobility and paid work that supplement conventional policies to improve entrepreneurship are required. However, as social norms involve coordinated actions and fear of sanction in case of noncompliance, these policies would work effectively if they are targeted towards both genders and entire neighbourhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines the effects of electricity consumption from different sectors such as agricultural, commercial, domestic, industrial (HV), industrial (LV-MV) and miscellaneous sectors on economic growth over the period of 1981–2019 in the case of India. We used SVAR framework and concluded that the consumption of electricity from agriculture sector has a negative impact on economic growth, whereas the industrial (HV and MV-LV) and commercial electricity consumption has positive impact on economic growth. Similarly, electricity consumption by the domestic sector has less positive effect on economic growth. Further, we computed the total factor productivity growth (TFP) by using the DEA method and showed the effects of sector-wise electricity consumption on TFP as the robustness of our analysis. We obtain similar kind of results. From the policy perceptive, the study suggests that the government must speed up the construction of a power grid to improve the availability of electricity for achieving higher rate of economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the role of absorptive capacity in understanding the association between international knowledge spillovers and total factor productivity (TFP) growth in Indian manufacturing. Imports and FDI provide two major channels of knowledge spillovers while private research and development (R&D) and education-weighted human capital are used as proxies for domestic absorptive capacity. Applying pooled linear regression on 2-digit manufacturing sectors based on NIC 2008 (ISIC Rev. 4) for 2000–2016 in India, positive spillover effects of FDI and imports on TFP growth are confirmed. However, when looking at moderation effects, absorptive capacity is found to moderate the relationship between knowledge spillovers and domestic productivity negatively. When the manufacturing sectors are sub-grouped based on their technological intensities, interesting differences emerge. For the low-tech and medium–low-tech sectors, spillovers from FDI negatively affect TFP. In contrast, in the high-tech and medium–high-tech sectors, spillovers from imports as well as FDI have a dampening effect on productivity. With respect to interaction effects, absorptive capacity negatively moderates the relationship between FDI spillovers and TFP growth in the low-tech sectors. In the high-tech sectors, interestingly, human capital positively moderates import spillovers for productivity growth while no such moderation effect is found for R&D. Overall, results indicate that industries witnessing considerable FDI inflows and imports in recent years have not experienced direct productivity gains in the same proportion. This highlights the importance of absorptive capacity for productivity growth and the need for policy intervention at disaggregated sectoral level in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explore the driving determinants on the export-related carbon intensity (ECI) of China, to better understand the impact of international trade on climate change governance and facilitate China's carbon intensity mitigation goals. First, China's ECI evolution and its gaps with the USA and India are measured during 2002–2014. Then, the main drivers of China's ECIvert study further discusses the influencing factors of ECI in the manufacturing industry using the environmental-extended STIRPAT model and GMM method. The results show that (1) China's overall ECI increases from 1.50 Kg/US$ in 2002 to 1.92 Kg/US$ in 2005 and then decreases to 1.27 Kg/US$ in 2014. The ECI of the manufacturing industry is significantly higher than that of the agriculture and service industry. China's ECI gap with the USA is greater than that with India, and both show a downward trend. (2) Carbon emission coefficient is the domain factor to reduce China's ECI during 2002–2014; the effects of the value-added coefficient, input–output structure, and final demand are limited. The input structure dominantly expands China's ECI gaps both with the USA and India, followed by the value-added coefficient. The carbon emission coefficient enlarges the ECI gap with the USA while reduces that with India. (3) Industrial productivity and value-added rate are negatively correlated with ECI in the manufacturing industry, while per capita capital stock plays the opposite role. The positive correlation between energy intensity and CIE becomes significant after distinguishing technology heterogeneity. In contrast to the non-tech-intensive manufacturing industry, the increase of backward GVCs participation of tech-intensive ones will reduce the ECI. The threshold effect of backward GVCs participation exists in the whole manufacturing industry. Targeted ECI reduction policy implications are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental pollution caused by carbon emissions is an emerging issue to study among researchers. The nexus between environmental pollution and carbon emissions has motivated researchers to evaluate the impact of cleaner energy on carbon emissions. This study further contributes to the research by examining the above relationship by studying the asymmetric influence of nuclear energy (NE), industrial productivity (IP), and economic growth rate (GDP) on carbon emissions (CO2) in India from 1975 to 2018 using the asymmetric autoregressive distribution lag approach. The results of the bound test and the Wald test show that in the long run, there is an asymmetric relationship between CO2, NE, GDP, and IP, and in the short run, there is a symmetric relationship between CO2, GDP, and IP. The result implies that increased usage of nuclear energy over fossil fuels and improvement in industrial productivity, in the long run, reduces CO2 emission in India. Furthermore, the study concludes that the government should consider the asymmetric relationship between the variables and devise appropriate policies to increased nuclear energy and industrial productivity in India for environmental sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]