Silk, Regional Rivalry, and the Impact of the Port Openings in Nineteenth Century Japan
Univ. of Nottingham Research Paper No. 2009/15
34 Pages Posted: 13 Aug 2009
Date Written: July 1, 2009
Abstract
The centre of economic activities in Japan was once in western Japan. Since the mid-nineteenth century, however, economic activities within Japan have been continuously shifting towards the east side of the country including Tokyo. Conventional wisdom associates the end of the Tokugawa feudal regime with this eastward shift. By applying a new economic geography model to the silk economy of Japan in the nineteenth century, this paper explains why the majority of industrial activities located initially in western Japan, and offers an alternative economic explanation for the eastward shift as an impact of the port openings in 1859.
Keywords: International trade, economic geography, Japan, silk trade
JEL Classification: F12, L67, N95, R12
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
The Empirics of Agglomeration and Trade
By Keith Head and Thierry Mayer
-
Market Access, Economic Geography, and Comparative Advantage: an Empirical Assessment
-
Economic Geography and Regional Production Structure: An Empirical Investigation
-
Economic Geography and Reginal Production Structure: An Empirical Investigation
-
The Home Market Effect and Bilateral Trade Patterns
By Gordon H. Hanson and Chong Xiang
-
On the Pervasiveness of Home Market Effects
By Keith Head, Thierry Mayer, ...