日本語タイトル:絹の糸―「失われた20年」の地域金融と地域経済

By a Silken Thread: Regional banking integration and pathways to financial development in Japan's Great Recession

執筆者 Mathias HOFFMANN (チューリッヒ大学) /大久保 敏弘 (慶應義塾大学)
発行日/NO. 2012年4月  12-E-026
研究プロジェクト グローバル化と災害リスク下で成長を持続する日本の経済空間構造とサプライチェーンに関する研究
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概要

地域(都道府県)間での地域金融の構造の違いが90年はじめのバブル崩壊後の不況の大きさと波及の長さに大きく影響し、地域間で大きな違いがあった。実際、中小企業が多く、かつ(他地域と)金融統合されていない地域では不況は深く長く続いた。この要因を分析するため、日本の地域金融の形成・発展過程と地域経済の関係を歴史的な観点で解明した。特に開国以来の日本の製糸業の発展とこれに伴う在来の地域金融の形成と発展が、今日の地域経済・地域金融市場に大きな影響を及ぼしていることを発見した。

概要(英語)

We examine the impact of cross-prefectural differences in financial integration on the regional spread of Japan's Great Recession in the early 1990s. In prefectures with many small manufacturing firms, post-1990 growth was significantly lower if low levels of banking integration with the rest of the country before 1990 existed. The least financially integrated and most credit-dependent prefectures also saw the largest declines in lending by major banks operating nationwide. This suggests that financing frictions were more severe in less financially integrated regions. We then show that cross-prefectural differences in financial integration in the late 20th century can be explained by regionally different pathways to financial development after Japan's opening in the late 19th century. Silk reeling emerged as Japan's main export industry after 1868. The silk industry was heavily dependent on credit for working capital, but silk reelers in the mountainous regions of central Japan generally could not borrow from the large banks in Yokohama or the other major cities. Instead, they either formed local credit cooperatives or local banks were founded with the help of Yokohama silk merchants who then effectively provided the silk reelers with trade credit. The silk regions therefore embarked on a path to financial development in which banking remained centered on a largely mutual or cooperative model and in which banks borrow and lend mainly regionally. Thus, the banking system of the late 19th-century silk-exporting regions was effectively less financially integrated with the rest of the country at the onset of the Great Recession of the 1990s. Using the number of silk filatures per capita at prefecture level in 1895 as an instrumental variable, we corroborate our result that the post-1990 decline was worse in prefectures with low levels of banking integration and high credit dependence.

Published: Hoffmann, Mathias, and Toshihiro Okubo, 2022. "By a silken thread: Regional banking integration and credit reallocation during Japan's lost decade," Journal of International Economics, Volume 137 (2022), 103579.