The Impact of Services Liberalization on Education

This paper studies the impact of services liberalization on education and the gender education gap at the district level in India. We focus on the time period 1987 to 1999 and three services sectors - banking, insurance and telecommunications - which were all state monopolies, have been heavily liberalized in the time frame studied, have relatively high shares of female employment and require high education investments. Our hypothesis is that the national-level liberalization spurred higher investment in education, particularly girls’ education, in districts with higher employment growth in these key services sectors.