IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eti/dpaper/17013.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Evolution of Sizes and Industrial Structure of Cities in Japan from 1980 to 2010: Constant churning and persistent regularity

Author

Listed:
  • MORI Tomoya

Abstract

This paper investigates the evolution of the Japanese economy between 1980 and 2010 from the viewpoint of population and industrial structure of cities. With the rural-to-urban transformation settling by the 1970s, Japan experienced the second stage of urbanization through the integration of nearby cities. This led, on average, to a disproportionate 24% population growth of a set of core cities. In the meantime, cities experienced substantial churning of industrial composition: on average, 35% of the three-digit manufacturing industries present in a city in 1980 had left by 2010, while on average, 30% of industries present in a city in 2010 were absent in the same city in 1980. Remarkably, these substantial relocations of population and industries among cities took place while preserving a simple yet rigid relationship between the size and industrial composition of cities characterized by the roughly constant elasticity between the number and average size of cities in which an industry was present. This paper discusses the policy implications of this persistent regularity and the possible underlying mechanisms.

Suggested Citation

  • MORI Tomoya, 2017. "Evolution of Sizes and Industrial Structure of Cities in Japan from 1980 to 2010: Constant churning and persistent regularity," Discussion papers 17013, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    • Handle: RePEc:eti:dpaper:17013
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/publications/dp/17e013.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Akamatsu, Takashi & Mori, Tomoya & Osawa, Minoru & Takayama, Yuki, 2017. "Spatial scale of agglomeration and dispersion: Theoretical foundations and empirical implications," MPRA Paper 80689, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Tabuchi, Takatoshi & Thisse, Jacques-François, 2011. "A new economic geography model of central places," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 240-252, March.
    3. Dixit, Avinash K & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1977. "Monopolistic Competition and Optimum Product Diversity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(3), pages 297-308, June.
    4. Benjamin Faber, 2014. "Trade Integration, Market Size, and Industrialization: Evidence from China's National Trunk Highway System," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(3), pages 1046-1070.
    5. Christian Broda & David E. Weinstein, 2006. "Globalization and the Gains From Variety," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(2), pages 541-585.
    6. Behrens, Kristian & Lamorgese, Andrea R. & Ottaviano, Gianmarco I.P. & Tabuchi, Takatoshi, 2009. "Beyond the home market effect: Market size and specialization in a multi-country world," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 259-265, November.
    7. Tomoya Mori & Koji Nishikimi & Tony E. Smith, 2008. "The Number‐Average Size Rule: A New Empirical Relationship Between Industrial Location And City Size," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 165-211, February.
    8. Nathaniel Baum-Snow & Loren Brandt & J. Vernon Henderson & Matthew A. Turner & Qinghua Zhang, 2017. "Roads, Railroads, and Decentralization of Chinese Cities," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 99(3), pages 435-448, July.
    9. Duranton, Gilles, 2006. "Some foundations for Zipf's law: Product proliferation and local spillovers," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 542-563, July.
    10. Nathan Schiff, 2015. "Cities and product variety: evidence from restaurants," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(6), pages 1085-1123.
    11. Davis, Donald R. & Dingel, Jonathan I., 2020. "The comparative advantage of cities," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    12. Behrens, Kristian & Lamorgese, Andrea R. & Ottaviano, Gianmarco I.P. & Tabuchi, Takatoshi, 2009. "Beyond the home market effect: Market size and specialization in a multi-country world," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 259-265, November.
    13. Wen‐Tai Hsu, 2012. "Central Place Theory and City Size Distribution," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(563), pages 903-932, September.
    14. Xavier Gabaix, 1999. "Zipf's Law for Cities: An Explanation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 739-767.
    15. Tomoya Mori & Tony E. Smith, 2011. "An Industrial Agglomeration Approach To Central Place And City Size Regularities," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(4), pages 694-731, October.
    16. Nathaniel Baum-Snow & Loren Brandt & J. Vernon Henderson & Matthew A. Turner & Qinghua Zhang, 2016. "Highways, Market Access and Urban Growth in China," SERC Discussion Papers 0200, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tomoya Mori, 2017. "Evolution of the Size and Industrial Structure of Cities in Japan between 1980 and 2010: Constant Churning and Persistent Regularity," Asian Development Review, MIT Press, vol. 34(2), pages 86-113, September.
    2. Stef Proost & Jacques-François Thisse, 2019. "What Can Be Learned from Spatial Economics?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 57(3), pages 575-643, September.
    3. Behrens, Kristian & Robert-Nicoud, Frédéric, 2015. "Agglomeration Theory with Heterogeneous Agents," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 171-245, Elsevier.
    4. Tomoya Mori, 2018. "Spatial Pattern and City Size Distribution," KIER Working Papers 996, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    5. Hsu, Wen-Tai & Holmes, Thomas J. & Morgan, Frank, 2014. "Optimal city hierarchy: A dynamic programming approach to central place theory," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 245-273.
    6. Marcus Berliant & Tomoya Mori, 2017. "Beyond urban form: How Masahisa Fujita shapes us," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 13(1), pages 5-28, March.
    7. MORI Tomoya & Jens WRONA, 2021. "Centrality Bias in Inter-city Trade," Discussion papers 21035, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    8. Takashi Akamatsu & Tomoya Mori & Minoru Osawa & Yuki Takayama, 2017. "Spatial Scale of Agglomeration and Dispersion: Theoretical Foundations and Empirical Implications," KIER Working Papers 974, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    9. Tomoya Mori, 2017. "Central Place Analysis," KIER Working Papers 959, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    10. MORI Tomoya, 2021. "Regularity in Urban Agglomeration Patterns and Its Macroscopic Implications for Regional Policies (Japanese)," Policy Discussion Papers (Japanese) 21012, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    11. Duranton, Gilles & Puga, Diego, 2014. "The Growth of Cities," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 5, pages 781-853, Elsevier.
    12. Thisse, Jacques-François & Proost, Stef, 2015. "Skilled Cities, Regional Disparities, and Efficient Transport: The state of the art and a research agenda," CEPR Discussion Papers 10790, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Dieter Pennerstorfer & Nora Schindler & Christoph Weiss & Biliana Yontcheva, 2020. "Income Inequality and Product Variety: Empirical Evidence," Economics working papers 2020-17, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    14. Raphael A. Auer, 2013. "Product Heterogeneity, Cross-Country Taste Differences, and the Consumption Home Bias," Working Papers 13.01, Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee.
    15. Kim, Ho Yeon, 2012. "Shrinking population and the urban hierarchy," IDE Discussion Papers 360, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    16. Baum-Snow, Nathaniel & Henderson, J. Vernon & Turner, Matthew A. & Zhang, Qinghua & Brandt, Loren, 2020. "Does investment in national highways help or hurt hinterland city growth?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    17. Gordon Mulligan & Mark Partridge & John Carruthers, 2012. "Central place theory and its reemergence in regional science," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 48(2), pages 405-431, April.
    18. José M. Gaspar, 2018. "A prospective review on New Economic Geography," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 61(2), pages 237-272, September.
    19. Mori, Tomoya & Smith, Tony E., 2015. "On the spatial scale of industrial agglomerations," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 1-20.
    20. Benoît Schmutz & Modibo Sidibé, 2021. "Search and Zipf: A model of Frictional Spatial Equilibrium," Working Papers 2021-01, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eti:dpaper:17013. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: TANIMOTO, Toko (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rietijp.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.