Gross Prefectural Domestic Product and Industrial Structure in Pre‐war Japan
Gross Prefectural Domestic Product and Industrial Structure in Pre‐war Japan
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战前日本县域国内生产总值与产业结构
作者：
Tangjun Yuan;K. Fukao;Tokihiko Settsu;J. Bassino
比较二战前后日本地区收入的研究经常描绘出一幅剧烈变化的画面，从一个以地区差异大为特征的经济，到一个以地区差异小为特征的经济。这篇论文得出了一个非常不同的结论。根据对1890年至1940年五个基准年的地级市增加值的估计（提供了对我们的估计方法的详细描述），我们研究了战前时期地级市之间经济发展差距的趋势，发现这一差距比之前的研究所声称的要小得多，实际上并不比战后时期大多少。此外，我们观察到战前时期县际间人均总增加值差异的下降，并进行了因素分析，发现这种下降的一个主要原因是县际间同一行业劳动生产率差异的下降。因此，本文所描绘的近代日本经济发展的图景与以往的研究有很大的不同。
Studies comparing regional income in Japan before and after World War II have frequently drawn a picture of radical change from an economy characterized by large regional disparities to one characterized by small regional disparities. This paper comes to a very different conclusion. Based on estimates of prefecture-level value added for five benchmark years from 1890 to 1940 (a detailed description of our estimation methodology is provided), we examine trends in the gap of economic development between prefectures during the pre-war period and find that this gap was much smaller than claimed in preceding studies and, in fact, not much greater than during the post-war period. Observing, moreover, a decline in inter-prefectural differences in terms of per-capita gross value added during the pre-war period, we conduct a factor analysis and find that a major reason for this decline was a decline in inter-prefectural differences in same-industry labor productivity. Thus, the picture of modern Japan's economic development presented here is very different from the one painted by preceding studies.