TY - JOUR
T1 - Industrial relocation policy, productivity and heterogeneous plants
T2 - Evidence from Japan
AU - Okubo, Toshihiro
AU - Tomiura, Eiichi
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors deeply acknowledge valuable comments from the Editor, two anonymous referees, and participants of seminars and conferences. This research is partly financed by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research and Japan's Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry (RIETI). The access to official micro-data was arranged by RIETI. Officials at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), especially Yuji Hosoya, helped us collect historical documents on relocation policies. Views expressed in this paper are not those of RIETI or METI.
PY - 2012/1
Y1 - 2012/1
N2 - Do regional policies for promoting periphery development attract high- or low-productivity firms? Though whether policies improve the core-periphery productivity gap hinges on this question, no consensus is found in theoretical models. This paper uses plant-level data covering all regions in Japan during the period of active relocation policies. Our estimation results from plant-level regressions and propensity-score matching show that the average productivity of plants is significantly low in regions targeted by relocation policy programs. By comparing productivity distributions across plants before and after the start of each policy program, we find that low-productivity plants are attracted to targeted regions.
AB - Do regional policies for promoting periphery development attract high- or low-productivity firms? Though whether policies improve the core-periphery productivity gap hinges on this question, no consensus is found in theoretical models. This paper uses plant-level data covering all regions in Japan during the period of active relocation policies. Our estimation results from plant-level regressions and propensity-score matching show that the average productivity of plants is significantly low in regions targeted by relocation policy programs. By comparing productivity distributions across plants before and after the start of each policy program, we find that low-productivity plants are attracted to targeted regions.
KW - Industrial relocation policy
KW - Plant-level data
KW - Productivity
KW - Subsidy
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80053479497&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=80053479497&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2011.09.004
DO - 10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2011.09.004
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:80053479497
SN - 0166-0462
VL - 42
SP - 230
EP - 239
JO - Regional Science and Urban Economics
JF - Regional Science and Urban Economics
IS - 1-2
ER -