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

Yutaka Arimoto, Kentaro Nakajima and Tetsuji Okazaki

No 16, PRIMCED Discussion Paper Series from Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Economic geography; Heterogeneous firms; Selection; Productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L10 O18 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2011-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/hermes/ir/re/22181/No16-dp.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Agglomeration or Selection? The Case of the Japanese Silk-Reeling Clusters, 1908-1915 (2011)
Working Paper: Productivity Improvement in the Specialized Industrial Clusters: The Case of the Japanese Silk-Reeling Industry (2011)
Working Paper: Agglomeration or Selection? The Case of the Japanese Silk-Reeling Clusters, 1908-1915 (2011)
Working Paper: Agglomeration or Selection? The Case of the Japanese Silk-reeling Industry, 1909-1916 (2010)
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hit:primdp:16

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in PRIMCED Discussion Paper Series from Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Digital Resources Section, Hitotsubashi University Library (lib-contents@ad.hit-u.ac.jp).