Technology Transfer and Early Industrial Development: Evidence from the Sino-Soviet Alliance

Michela Giorcelli and Bo Li

No 9552, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This paper studies the causal effect of technology and knowledge transfers on early industrial development. Between 1950 and 1957, the Soviet Union supported the “156 Projects” in China for building technologically advanced industrial facilities. We exploit idiosyncratic delays in project completion and the unexpected end of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, and show that receiving both Soviet technology and know-how had large, persistent effects on plant performance, while the effects of receiving only Soviet capital goods were short-lived. The intervention generated horizontal and vertical spillovers, and production reallocation from state-owned to privately owned companies since the late 1990s.

Keywords: industrialization; technology transfer; knowledge diffusion; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L20 M20 N34 N64 O32 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis, nep-cna, nep-cse, nep-his, nep-ppm and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp9552.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9552

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().