Japan’s remarkable postwar growth spurt in the 1960s would not have been possible without Japan’s alliance with the United States. Policy makers, political scientists, economists, historians, and journalists on both sides of the Pacific have made this claim, but no study has yet tested it...

This study examines intra-regional disparity and municipal merger in Fukuoka Prefecture. Fukuoka Prefecture (Fukuoka-ken) is a prefecture of Japan located on Kyushu Island. It faces the sea on three sides, bordering on Saga, Oita, and Kumamoto prefectures and facing Yamaguchi Prefecture across...

In this article, we quantitatively analyze changes in the size distribution of municipal jurisdictions in Japan by using their rank-size distribution to capture the change. In Japan, the central government sometimes enacts large-scale municipal mergers, aimed at the creating of municipalities of...

This paper examines the question of inter-regional spillovers in Fukuoka Prefecture. Fukuoka Prefecture is located on the west side of Japan, and is near the Korean peninsula. There are two government-designated major cities in Fukuoka Prefecture. One is Fukuoka City, which is the central city...

This study evaluates the progress of efficient energy use and the control of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in Japan between 1990 and 2012. A new indicator of energy performance is presented called environmental energy efficiency (EEE). The EEE of manufacturing industries was measured by each...

The paper argues that Thailand's economic and social development from the late 19th century to the early 21st century presents a puzzle. For much of the period from 1870 to 1940, the country's economic growth was slow, and the economy remained agricultural, with little diversification into...

I use a dynamic Solow growth model, augmented with human capital, labor-hours, and oil prices, to show that Japan’s growth in GDP/adult over 1969-2007 can be explained as a process of convergence to a world steady-state rate of 1%/year. I find that each additional year of average schooling...

This paper tests directly a geography and growth model using regional data for Europe, the US, and Japan during different time periods. We set up a standard geography and growth model with a poverty trap and derive a log-linearized growth equation that corresponds directly to a threshold...