"Estimating Interregional Utility Differentials"

The examination of long-term Japanese data on interregional migration revealed three stylized facts of migration behavior. Based on the facts, we formulated an operational model and estimated interregional utility differentials. We found that the interregional utility differentials have been converging until the late 1970s. We showed that the utility estimates are highly correlated with per capita real income. We also applied the model to interregional migration in the United States and Canada as well as the interindustry movement in Japan and confirmed the model's validity.

Agglomeration or Selection? The Case of the Japanese Silk-Reeling Clusters, 1908-1915

We examine two sources of productivity improvement in the specialized industrial clusters of the early twentieth century Japanese silk-reeling industry. Agglomeration improves the productivity of each plant through positive externalities, shifting plant-level productivity distribution to the right. Selection expels less productive plants through competition, truncating distribution on the left. We find no evidence confirming a right shift in the distribution in clusters or that agglomeration promotes faster productivity growth. Rather, the distribution in clusters was severely left truncated, even for younger plants. These findings imply that the plant-selection effect was the source of higher productivity in the Japanese silk-reeling clusters.Economic geography, Heterogenous firms, Industrial clusters, Productivity

Productivity Improvement in the Specialized Industrial Clusters: The Case of the Japanese Silk-Reeling Industry

We examine two sources of productivity improvement in the specialized industrial clusters. Agglomeration improves the roductivity of each plant through positive externalities, shifting plant-level productivity distribution to the right. Selection expels less productive plants through competition, truncating distribution on the left. By analyzing the data of the early twentieth century Japanese silk-reeling industry, we find no evidence confirming a right shift in the distribution in clusters or that gglomeration promotes faster productivity growth. These findings imply that the plant-selection effect was the source of higher productivity in the Japanese silk-reeling clusters.Economic geography, Heterogeneous firms, Selection, Productivity

Productivity Improvement in the Specialized Industrial Clusters: The Case of the Japanese Silk-Reeling Industry

We examine two sources of productivity improvement in the specialized industrial clusters. Agglomeration improves the productivity of each plant through positive externalities, shifting plant-level productivity distribution to the right. Selection expels less productive plants through competition, truncating distribution on the left. By analyzing the data of the early twentieth century Japanese silk-reeling industry, we find no evidence confirming a right shift in the distribution in clusters or that agglomeration promotes faster productivity growth. These findings imply that the plant-selection effect was the source of higher productivity in the Japanese silk-reeling clusters.Economic geography, Heterogeneous firms, Selection, Productivity

Measuring Economic Localization: Evidence from Japanese Firm-level Data

This paper examines location patterns of Japan’s manufacturing industries using a unique firm-level dataset on the geographic location of firms. Following the point-pattern approach proposed by Duranton and Overman (2005), we find the following. First, about half of Japan’s manufacturing industries can be classified as localized and the number of localized industries is largest for a distance level of 40 km or less. Second, several industries in the textile mill products sector are among the most localized, which is similar to findings for the UK, suggesting that there exist common factors across countries determining the concentration of industrial activities. Third, the distribution of distances between entrant (exiting) firms and remaining firms is, in most industries, not significantly different from a random distribution. These results suggest that most industries in Japan neither become more localized nor more dispersed over time and are in line with similar findings by Duranton and Overman (2008) for the UK. Fourth, a comparison with the service sector indicates that the share of localized industries is higher in manufacturing than in services, although the extent of localization among the most localized manufacturing industries is smaller than that among the most localized service industries, including financial service industriesMicro-geographic data, Economic geography

Analyzing the impact of labor market integration

We develop a competitive search model involving multiple regions, geographically mobile workers, and moving costs. Equilibrium mobility patterns are analyzed and characterized, indicating that shocks to a particular region, such as a productivity shock, can propagate to other regions through workers' mobility. Moreover, equilibrium mobility patterns are not efficient due to the existence of moving costs, implying that they affect social welfare not only because they are costs but also because they distort equilibrium allocation. By calibrating our framework to Japanese regional data, we demonstrate that the impacts of eliminating migration costs are comparable to those of a 30% productivity increase

Consumption access and agglomeration: evidence from smartphone data

We provide new theory and evidence on the role of consumption access in understanding the agglomeration of economic activity. We combine smartphone data that records user location every 5 minutes of the day with economic census data on the location of service-sector establishments to measure commuting and noncommuting trips within the Greater Tokyo metropolitan area. We show that non-commuting trips are frequent, more localized than commuting trips, strongly related to the availability of nontraded services, and occur along trip chains. Guided by these empirical findings, we develop a quantitative urban model that incorporates travel to work and travel to consume non-traded services. Using the structure of the model, we estimate theoretically-consistent measures of travel access, and show that consumption access makes a sizable contribution relative to workplace access in explaining the observed variation in residents and land prices across locations. Undertaking counterfactuals for changes in travel costs, we show that abstracting from consumption trips leads to a substantial underestimate of the welfare gains from a transport improvement (because of the undercounting of trips) and leads to a distorted picture of changes in travel patterns within the city (because of the different geography of commuting and non-commuting trips)

Agglomeration economies in Vietnam : a firm-level analysis

This paper examines the effects of agglomeration economies on firm‐level productivity in Vietnam. By using Vietnamese firm‐level data and the cluster detection method proposed by Mori and Smith (2013), we estimate the agglomeration economies for firm‐level productivity. Specifically, we consider the different effects of agglomeration economies for localization and urbanization, as well as across types of firms; state‐owned, private, and foreign‐owned firms. Furthermore, we decompose the agglomeration economies into the three sources of the effect; inter‐industry transaction relationships, knowledge spillovers, and labor pooling. We find the following results. First, localization economies actually improve firm‐level productivity in Vietnam, with firms in the clustered areas having higher productivities. However, the localization economies do not improve the productivity of the state‐owned firms. Second, urbanization economies improve productivity only for foreign‐owned firms. State‐owned and private firms do not benefit from urbanization economies. From the decomposition of agglomeration economies, we find that agglomeration economies formed through transactions work only for private firms. On the other hand, agglomeration economies formed through knowledge spillovers and labor pooling work for foreign‐owned firms