This paper analyzes the geographical concentration and diversification of industries in the Continuum-of-Goods Trade Model in the presence of labor migration, comparative advantage, and external increasing returns to scale. In the model, higher transportation costs lead to concentration in one...

This paper studies how market-specific entry sunk costs (regulation costs) affect the Home Market Effect (HME) with firm marginal costs heterogeneity. Our model is based on the Dixit-Stiglitz monopolistic competition model with firm heterogeneity plus regulation costs difference. We find that a...

This paper studies the impact of trade costs reduction on geographical concentration in the presence of firm heterogeneity and overhead type of export fixed costs. Firm heterogeneity with the export fixed costs hampers full agglomeration through weakening the forward and backward linkages and...

Despite world-wide bloc economies after the Depression, Japan had a tight relationship with the British Commonwealth and created tight connections with the Sterling and the Gold blocs in the late 1930s. The world-wide bloc economies did not isolate Japan.

This paper examines alternative determinants of intra-industry trade (IIT). Technology transfer via vertical FDI can be an alternative determinant to distance and country-specific factors in gravity equations. Vertical FDI is likely to be made in neighbouring countries in the presence of large...

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the trading system in the interwar period concerning the Japanese Empire by means of border effect analysis in the gravity model. The results show sizeable and steadily increasing trading bloc border effects from the 1910s through the 1930s. This sizeable...

This paper analyzes the causes of the decline in Japan’s border effect by estimating gravity equations for Japan’s international and interregional trade in four machinery industries (electrical, general, precision, and transportation machinery). In the estimation, we explicitly take account...