What causes the regional Balassa-Samuelson effect?

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K01566
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 07040:Economic policy-related
• Research Institution: Shinshu University
• Principal Investigator: Tokui Joji 信州大学, 学術研究院社会科学系, 教授 (90192658)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: 地域経済学 / バラッサ・サムエルソン効果 / 地域間生産性格差 / 地域間サービス価格差 / 土地サービス投入

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We observe a positive correlation between differences in service prices and productivity among Japanese regions. Although there is apparent resemblance with the famous Balassa-Samuelson Effect, we cannot observe the same labor productivity differences as the original version. Therefore, we consider two alternative hypotheses that may explain the regional Balassa-Samuelson effect: high land use costs or high labor costs in urban areas. We constructed consistent prefectural-level IO tables, and estimated land use costs for each industry in each prefecture. We apply the Leontief price model and calculate regional price differences caused by differences in both land use cost and labor cost and we estimate a regression equation with regional service price index as dependent variable and we decompose the sum of squares for the dependent variable into that related to land use cost and that related to labor cost.

Free Research Field

経済政策

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

地域版バラッサ・サムエルソン効果は、国際版のものと同じ背景要因で説明することはできず、それに代わる仮説も複数存在しているので、どの代替仮説がより重要かを実証的に確定することは学術的にも意義がある。加えて、高生産地域のサービス価格上昇が、地価上昇を通じて起こるのか労働コスト上昇を通じて起こるのかは、分配政策上も大きな違いがあり、リーディング産業の地域立地政策の意義に異なる評価をもたらす。