Industrial Clusters in the Long Run: Evidence from Million-Rouble Plants in China

Stephan Heblich, Marlon Seror, Hao Xu and Yanos Zylberberg

No 30744, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study the impact of large, successful manufacturing plants on other local producers in China, focusing on “Million-Rouble Plants” built in the 1950s during a brief alliance with the U.S.S.R. The ephemeral geopolitical situation and the locations of allied and enemy airbases provide exogenous variation in plant siting. We find a boom-and-bust pattern: Counties hosting these plants were 80% more productive than control counties in 1982 but 20% less productive by 2010. This decline reflects the performance of local establishments, which exhibit low productivity, limited innovation, and high markup. Specialization hindered spillovers, preventing the emergence of new clusters and local entrepreneurship.

JEL-codes: J24 N95 R11 R50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-ent, nep-geo, nep-his, nep-lma and nep-ure
Note: DAE DEV PR
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w30744.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Industrial Clusters in the Long Run: Evidence from Million-Rouble Plants in China (2026)
Working Paper: Industrial clusters in the long run: Evidence from Million-Rouble plants in China (2025)
Working Paper: Industrial clusters in the long run: Evidence from Million-Rouble plants in China (2019)
Working Paper: Industrial clusters in the long run: evidence from Million-Rouble plants in China (2019)
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:nbr:nberwo:30744

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w30744

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().