Private investment in India: regional patterns and determinants

This paper analyses private investment by type for 15 major states over the period from 1993-1994 to 2004-2005. This study is new in investigating the determinants of total private investment and domestic private investment at the state level in the Indian context by using generalized method of moments panel estimator. The results show that there is high variation in private investment across Indian states. The results obtained from the regressions show that private investment in the Indian states is explained by infrastructure, the gross fiscal deficit, market size and labour productivity. This paper contributes to the literature on regional development by empirically establishing the existence of simultaneity between private investment and income at the state level in Indian economy.