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标题：Ask an Economist: What are the obstacles and potential opportunities for economic growth in India?
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作者：B. Ravikumar
期刊名称：Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis - Regional Economist
出版年度：2014
出版社：Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
摘要：A: There are two main obstacles. The first is labor regulations. Developing econo- mies usually transition from agriculture to manufacturing. But the transition in India has been to the service sector. This is due in part to labor regulations. For instance, a firm with 100 or more workers has to seek per- mission from the government to reassign the workers to different tasks, to lay off workers or to close the firm. Such regulations impede large-scale manufacturing operations that could employ thousands of workers producing unskilled-labor-intensive products. As a result, the movement of workers from agriculture to manufacturing is practically nonexistent. This is evident in the share of labor force in agriculture in India: It is almost 50 percent. That is a large number. The second is infrastructure. This is a well-known problem. Decades of underinvestment have left the country with dire deficits in critical areas, such as railways, roads, ports, air- ports, electricity and water. In the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report for 2013-14, India ranked 85 out of 148 countries for infrastructure. The opportunities are extensive. The first one, which people usually are aware of, is that India is well-equipped with talent in science and engineering. The second, not so well-known, is the size and age distribution of the consumers. The chart above depicts the age distribution of the population. Just to give you some perspective, there are more than 600 million people in India aged 25 or younger. How big is that. Well, if you added up the entire populations of the U.S., Mexico and Canada, you wouldn't come to even 500 million. So, India is a big market. And this, of course, will be the working-age population in the next few decades, when these millions will be not only earning but also spending. These are potentially good opportunities not only for India but also for U.S. firms that sell consumer goods abroad