Industrial clusters, networks and resilience to the Covid-19 shock in China

Abstract

We examine how Covid-19 resilience of Chinese firms varied with a cluster index (measuring spatial agglomeration of firms in related industries) at the county level. Two data sources are used: entry flows of newly registered firms in the entire country, and an entrepreneur sample survey regarding operation of existing firms. Both show greater resilience in counties with a higher cluster index, after controlling for industry dummies and local infection rates, besides county and time dummies in the entry data. Reliance of clusters on high density informal entrepreneur hometown networks and closer proximity to suppliers and customers help explain these findings.