We exploit the natural experiment of Japan’s opening to international trade to examine how comparative advantage can … shape a country’s long-run path towards financial development. In the late 19th century, many of Japan’s prefectures had a …

We exploit the natural experiment of Japan’s opening to international trade to examine how comparative advantage can … shape a country’s long-run path towards financial development. In the late 19th century, many of Japan’s prefectures had a …

During Japan's ‘Lost Decade', reallocation of credit through the internal capital markets of country-wide banks … mitigated the real effects from the bank liqudity shock in prefectures with many bank-dependent SMEs. We document that the … regional fragmentation of banking markets in Japan goes back to the institutions set up for silk export finance in the late 19 …

Regional differences in banking integration determined how Japan's Great Recession after 1990 spread across the country …. We explain these differences with the emergence of silk reeling as the main export industry after Japan's opening to …

How do financial development and financial integration interact? We focus on Japan’s Great Recession after 1990 to … reference to prefectures’ different historical pathways to financial development. After Japan’s opening to trade in the 19th …, the main export hub for silk, provided silk reelers with trade loans. Many regional banks in Japan were founded as local …