Marlon Seror

Ongoing Research

• Industrial clusters in the long run: Evidence from Million-Rouble plants in China (Conditionally accepted, Review of Economic Studies; Latest Version, NBER WP, Appendix), joint with S. Heblich, H. Xu, and Y. Zylberberg.

  This paper identifies the negative spillovers exerted by large, successful factories on other local production units in China. A short-lived cooperation program between the U.S.S.R. and China led to the construction of 156 "Million-Rouble plants" in the 1950s. The identification exploits the ephemeral geopolitical context and exogenous variation in location decisions due to the relative position of allied and enemy airbases. We find a rise-and-fall pattern in counties hosting a factory and show that a double curse explains their long-run decline. The analysis of production linkages shows that a very large cluster of non-innovative establishments enjoys technological rents along the production chain of Million-Rouble plants. This industrial concentration reduces the local supply of entrepreneurs.

  Presented at the 2019 Conference on Urban and Regional Economics (CURE), Harvard Cities and Development Workshop (2020).

• Persistence Despite Revolutions (R&R, Review of Economic Studies; Latest Version, NBER WP), joint with A. Alesina, D. Yang, Y. You, and W. Zeng.

  Can efforts to eradicate inequality in wealth and education eliminate intergenerational persis- tence of socioeconomic status? The Chinese Communist Revolution and Cultural Revolution aimed to do exactly that. Using newly digitized archival records, contemporary census and household survey data, we show that the revolutions were effective in homogenizing the pop- ulation economically in the short run. However, the pattern of inequality that characterized the pre-revolution generation re-emerges almost half a century after the revolutions. Individu- als whose grandparents belonged to the pre-revolution elite earn 12 percent more income and have completed more than 11 percent additional years of schooling than those from the rest of the population. We find evidence that human capital (such as knowledge, skills, and values) has been transmitted within the elite families. Moreover, the pre-revolution elite either move to opportunities or stay to benefit from the social capital embodied in kinship networks that have survived the revolutions. These channels allow the pre-revolution elite to rebound af- ter the revolutions, and their socioeconomic status persists despite one of the most aggressive attempts to eliminate differences in the population.

  Presented at: NBER Economics of Mobility meeting (2020).

  Media coverage: NBER Digest, The Economist (2020), The Economist (2022), Forbes (2022), InequaliTalks podcast (2023).

• Floating population: migration with(out) family and the spatial distribution of economic activity (Latest Version, CEPR WP), joint with C. Imbert, J. Monras, and Y. Zylberberg.

  This paper argues that migrants' decision to bring their dependent family members shapes their consumption behavior, their choice of destination, and their sensitivity to migration barriers. We document that in China: (i) rural migrants disproportionately move to expensive cities; (ii) in these cities they live without their family and in poorer housing conditions; and (iii) they remit more, especially when living without their family. We then develop a quantitative general equilibrium spatial model in which migrant households choose whether, how (with or without their family), and where to migrate. We estimate the model using plausibly exogenous variation in wages, housing prices, and exposure to family migration costs. We use the model to estimate migration costs and relate them to migration policy. We find that hukou policies protect workers in large, expensive, and high income cities at the expense of rural households, who use remittances to overcome some of these costs.

  Presented at the 2023 CURE/ERWIT conference.

• Random river: Trade and rent extraction in imperial China (Latest Version, WP).

  This paper exploits exogenous changes in the course of the Yellow River in China to isolate variation in the natural distribution of economic centers across space. I compute time-varying trade costs and collect original data on population and taxation from dynastic histories and local gazetteers spanning 2,000 years. This allows me to assess the effect of exogenous variation in market access on population density and resource extraction. I find that the changes in connectedness have two opposite effects. First, they induce a very large increase in the level and concentration of economic activity in the shorter run. Second, they trigger a large increase in rent capture by local elites, which severely mitigates the concentration effect in the longer run.

  Presented at the 2019 India-China Conference, Warwick.

• Migrants' Beliefs and Investment (Latest Version, WP).

  Migration increases sending households' capacity to invest but introduces additional information asymmetry between household members. In this paper, I establish a new stylized fact: Migrants systematically overestimate assets that they typically invest in and that are held by their households. This is shown using novel data with matched reports from Senegalese migrants and their own households of origin. I find empirical support for a self-selection mechanism: migrants are more likely to sort into investment, the more optimistic they are about their households' trustworthiness, and reject alternative interpretations based on behavioral biases. I finally assess the extent of missing investments: Selection out of investment is large and severely reduces the developmental impact of migration.

  An earlier version was awarded the Grand Prix (first prize) of the International Competition of Master's Degree Theses in Economics and Finance and presented at the AEA Meetings in 2015.