Interdependence of the pre-war Japanese economy and its change over time

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17H02549
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Economic history
• Research Institution: Hitotsubashi University
• Principal Investigator: SAITO Osamu 一橋大学, 名誉教授 (40051867)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 尾高 煌之助 一橋大学, その他部局等, 名誉教授 (90017658) ; 深尾 京司 一橋大学, 経済研究所, 特任教授 (30173305) ; 攝津 斉彦 武蔵大学, 経済学部, 教授 (30613393) ; 結城 武延 東北大学, 経済学研究科, 准教授 (80613679)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2021-03-31
• Keywords: 経済史 / 産業連関分析 / 歴史的国民所得分析 / 人口労働統計 / 産業構造論

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Conventional wisdom holds that pre-war Japan's industrialization started from a low level of development but exhibited a rapid growth performance. This project challenges that scenario with two major findings. The first issue concerns the ratios that divide gross output into intermediate inputs and value added. Based on business reports released by individual joint-stock companies, the trend was for the share of intermediate inputs to decline over time. The second is the lack of accurate estimates on output of small workshops (defined as those employing less than five workers). Having scrutinized factory survey data for nine industries and conducted regression analysis focusing on a certain group of smaller size categories, we successfully estimated a time-series of output for each industry, showing a‘the earlier the higher' tendency for the less-than-five, suggesting that Meiji Japan's industrial sector was larger but the subsequent level of growth slower than previously thought.

Free Research Field

社会科学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

戦前日本の工業化に関するかつての見解は，比較史的に低い経済水準から出発し，迅速な工業化を達成したというものであった。実証研究の進展とともにその見方に対する見直しが進み，この研究もその流れのなかにある。本研究の成果は，明治期の製造業生産水準は通説よりも高位であったこと，しかし零細企業の割合が想像以上に大きく，それゆえ1930年代にかけての製造業成長率は想定されていたよりも低位であったことを示唆する。