Market Size, Linkages, and Productivity: A Study of Japanese Regions

Donald R. Davis () and David Weinstein ()

No 8518, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: One account of spatial concentration focuses on productivity advantages arising from market size. We investigate this for forty regions of Japan. Our results identify important effects of a region's own size, as well as cost linkages between producers and suppliers of inputs. Productivity links to a more general form of 'market potential' or Marshall-Arrow-Romer externalities do not appear to be robust in our data. Landlocked status does not matter for productivity of regions in Japan. The effects we identify are economically quite important, accounting for a substantial portion of cross-regional productivity differences. A simple counterfactual shows that if economic activity were spread evenly over the forty regions of Japan, aggregate output would fall by nearly twenty percent.

JEL-codes: F1 R1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff and nep-sea
Date: 2001-10
Note: EFG ITI PR
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8518.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
Working Paper: Market Size, Linkages, and Productivity: A Study Of Japanese Regions (2003)
Working Paper: Market size, linkages, and productivity: A study of Japanese regions (2002)
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8518

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8518
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

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