Determinants of Headquarters Location Choices and Productivity Sorting: Evidence from Japanese firm-level data

This paper explores the timing and location of firms' headquarters relocation using Japanese firm-level data. The issue on the location choices for corporate headquarters has attracted the attention of not only academic researchers but also policy makers. Since the agglomeration of headquarters increases the demand for educated workers and service outsourcing businesses, it is important to clarify the determinants of the location choices of headquarters. In addition, in this paper, we pay attention to the heterogeneous impact of productivity on location choices. Our result suggests that high productivity firms are more likely to relocate their headquarters to high wage regions.