This paper examines location patterns of Japan’s manufacturing industries using a unique firm-level dataset on the geographic location of firms. Following the point-pattern approach proposed by Duranton and Overman (2005), we find the following. First, about half of Japan’s manufacturing...

We examine two sources of productivity improvement in the specialized industrial clusters of the early twentieth century Japanese silk-reeling industry. Agglomeration improves the productivity of each plant through positive externalities, shifting plant-level productivity distribution to the...