Research Programs: Raising Industrial and Firm Productivity

Refinement and Analysis of the Regional-Level Japan Industrial Productivity Database: Providing basic information for Japan's regional development policy

Project Leader/Sub-Leader

TOKUI Joji

TOKUI Joji (Faculty Fellow)

Leader

Overview

The purpose of this project is to update and refine our Regional-Level Japan Industrial Productivity Database (R-JIP) and to carry out some analyses using the database. The refinement of the database includes such tasks as estimating the regional price level differences, retroactively extending the database to the period before 1970, and evaluating the interregional service input from the headquarters of companies operating nationwide. To update the database to the period after 2010, we need to tackle the task of coordinating the data with a newly introduced industrial classification. From our previous analysis on regional economic convergence in Japan, we found a recent expanding trend in the regional total factor productivity (TFP) differences within the same industry, which significantly contributed to the stagnant tendency of the regional economic convergence after the 1990s. The next step of our analysis is to investigate the causes of the recent expansion of intra-industry TFP differences among regions in Japan.

April 21, 2015 - March 31, 2017

Major Research Results

2017

RIETI Discussion Papers

2016

RIETI Discussion Papers