IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/21527.html

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

Author

Listed:
  • Heblich, Stephan
  • Seror, Marlon
  • Xu, Hao
  • Zylberberg, Yanos

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Heblich, Stephan & Seror, Marlon & Xu, Hao & Zylberberg, Yanos, 2026. "Industrial Clusters in the Long Run: Evidence from Million-Rouble Plants in China," CEPR Discussion Papers 21527, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21527
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP21527
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
    • R53 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Regional Government Analysis - - - Public Facility Location Analysis; Public Investment and Capital Stock
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • N95 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - Asia including Middle East

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21527. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CEPR (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://cepr.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.