Linking seaport activity and regional economy: an analysis at the level of Japanese prefectures

Hidekazu Itoh and David Guerrero ()
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Hidekazu Itoh: Kwansei Gakuin University
David Guerrero: IFSTTAR/AME/SPLOTT - Systèmes Productifs, Logistique, Organisation des Transports et Travail - IFSTTAR - Institut Français des Sciences et Technologies des Transports, de l'Aménagement et des Réseaux - Communauté Université Paris-Est

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Abstract: This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the links between seaport activity and regional manufacturing in Japan during the 1990-2010 period. Through an analysis of changes on regional share, it shows that at regional scale, changes in port throughput are highly linked with changes in manufacturing employment. Hence shrink in port throughput has much more affected the main metropolitan regions than the rest of Japan. However many regions deviate from this general trend. In a second step, using the existing literature and some detailed data, we explain some of these deviating figures. Regional specificities and the strategies of manufacturing firms and shipping lines seem to influence the intensity of throughput changes. We argue that the intensity of the shrink in the ports located in the metropolitan regions is due to shifts in manufacturing (metropolitan regions play new roles inside the system of production). Through other cases, we show that some regions specialized in niches in manufacturing might reduce the impact of the crisis, or at least make it less dependent upon national dynamics. Our study also shows that while some manufacturing activities generating heavy and large cargo flows tend to be tightly connected to the seaport city and region, other manufacturing activities, which are highly regionally specialized and mainly involved in international horizontal division of labor, are less connected.

Keywords: PORT; REGION; INDUSTRIE; TRANSPORT MARITIME; FABRICATION; JAPON; ECONOMIE (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-09-26
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Published in RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2014 Geographies of co-production, Sep 2014, France. 30p

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01070208

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