This article compares Japan and Southeast Asia before the Second World War to explore the question Goldsmith posed: why, since financial transition in all countries follows the same path, should there be such remarkable differences in the speed of transition? Beginning after the Meiji...

This article uses new data sets to analyze labor market integration between 1882 and 1936 in an area of Asia stretching from South India to Southeastern China and encompassing the three Southeast Asian countries of Burma, Malaya and Thailand. We find that by the late nineteenth century,...

This paper analyzes how Japan financed its World War II occupation of Southeast Asia, the transfer of resources to Japan, and the monetary and inflation consequences of Japanese policies. In Malaya, Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines, the issue of military scrip to pay for resources and...

This working paper analyzes demographic change in Southeast Asia’s main cities during and soon after the World War II Japanese occupation. We argue that two main patterns of population movements are evident. In food-deficit areas, a search for food security typically led to large net inflows...

This article uses new data to analyze the impact on Southeast Asian urbanization of globalization and industrialization in the world economy's core countries between the 1870s and World War II. Dramatic falls in transport costs and free trade, enforced, if necessary, by colonial rule, combined...

This paper analyzes how Japan financed its World War II occupation of Southeast Asia, the transfer of resources to Japan, and the monetary and inflation consequences of Japanese policies. In Malaya, Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines, the issue of military scrip to pay for resources and...