Regional Impact of Monetary Policy in India: A State-level Analysis

The study analyses the state-level effect of India’s monetary policy during the regime of a multiple indicator approach and a flexible inflation-targeting framework. The study employs a panel vector autoregression model to investigate the impact of a unified monetary policy on the economic growth of four groups of Indian states: high-income states, upper-middle-income states, lower-middle-income states and low-income states. The results of the impulse response functions indicate significant cross-state variation in response to policy interventions, both in terms of extent and timing. The response of states’ economic growth to unified monetary policy shocks is found to vary across the four states using quantitative (M 3 /P) or price-based measures of monetary policy (repo rate). While shocks in repo rate are subject to a response lag of one period, the responses of the states to changes in aggregate money supply are immediate with high-income states showing a negative response to changes in M 3 /P. The study supports previous findings that monetary policy’s regional effects are influenced by the share of manufacturing and construction, distribution of large versus small firms and availability of credit from banked sources. Both the interest rate channel and the credit channel in monetary policy operations appear to co-exist for the decentralized Indian economy. JEL Classifications: E52, E58, E 27, E47, R11