Place-based preferential tax policy and industrial development: Evidence from India’s program on industrially backward districts

Abstract

We evaluate a tax-exemption program initiated by the Indian government in 1994 to promote manufacturing in districts designated as industrially backward on the basis of a continuous gradation score that reflected district characteristics in early 1990s. Employing a regression discontinuity design, we find that the program led to a significant increase in firm entry and employment, especially in light manufacturing industries of the better-off backward districts in the short run. However, this was partly driven by spatial displacement of economic activity from neighboring districts that narrowly missed qualifying for the program. ​Further, we do not find the effects of the program to persist after it ended.