TY - JOUR
T1 - Impact of natural disasters on industrial agglomeration
T2 - The case of the Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923
AU - Imaizumi, Asuka
AU - Ito, Kaori
AU - Okazaki, Tetsuji
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Reiko Aoki, Yutaka Arimoto, Maartin Bosker, Yusaku Horiuchi, Peter Howlet, Takashi Kurosaki, Tomohiro Machikita, Chiaki Moriguchi, Kentaro Nakajima, Kaoru Sugihara Osamu Saito, and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and discussions. This paper received financial support from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research B 21330064 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2016/4/1
Y1 - 2016/4/1
N2 - The Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923 did enormous damage to industries in Tokyo Prefecture. Around 40% of the buildings in Tokyo Prefecture were completely burnt or destroyed. In this paper, we investigate whether this temporary shock had a persistent impact on the spatial distribution of industries in Tokyo, using ward- and county-level panel data for industrial workers. It was found that while the earthquake caused mean shifts in the shares and numbers of workers, these mean shifts disappeared by the early 1930s. On the other hand, the earthquake caused shifts in the trends in the share and number of workers. The combined effects of these mean shifts and trend shifts were persistent for both the shares and the numbers of workers. The earthquake caused especially serious damage to the old industrial clusters in the southeast of Tokyo, and provided an opportunity for newly developing industrial clusters in non-damaged areas to take over the market. Further, the people and the local governments in non-damaged areas made an effort to take advantage of this opportunity to attract factories. Arguably, these forces made the impact of the earthquake on the spatial distribution of industry persistent.
AB - The Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923 did enormous damage to industries in Tokyo Prefecture. Around 40% of the buildings in Tokyo Prefecture were completely burnt or destroyed. In this paper, we investigate whether this temporary shock had a persistent impact on the spatial distribution of industries in Tokyo, using ward- and county-level panel data for industrial workers. It was found that while the earthquake caused mean shifts in the shares and numbers of workers, these mean shifts disappeared by the early 1930s. On the other hand, the earthquake caused shifts in the trends in the share and number of workers. The combined effects of these mean shifts and trend shifts were persistent for both the shares and the numbers of workers. The earthquake caused especially serious damage to the old industrial clusters in the southeast of Tokyo, and provided an opportunity for newly developing industrial clusters in non-damaged areas to take over the market. Further, the people and the local governments in non-damaged areas made an effort to take advantage of this opportunity to attract factories. Arguably, these forces made the impact of the earthquake on the spatial distribution of industry persistent.
KW - Economic geography
KW - Economic history
KW - Industrial agglomeration
KW - Japan
KW - Natural disaster
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84956886339&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.eeh.2015.11.005
DO - 10.1016/j.eeh.2015.11.005
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84956886339
SN - 0014-4983
VL - 60
SP - 52
EP - 68
JO - Explorations in Economic History
JF - Explorations in Economic History
ER -