2007 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Quantitative Economic Geography on Hysteretic Effects of Factories and Locational Transformations of Japanese Enterprises
| Project/Area Number |
18520604
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Human geography
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| Research Institution | The University of Tokyo |
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Principal Investigator |
MATSUBARA Hiroshi The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Professor (50181748)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2006 – 2007
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| Keywords | Economic geography / Regional policy / Hysteresis / Plant closure / Industrial location / Restructuring / Hollowing-out phenomenon / Regional Innovation |
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| Research Abstract |
This research intends to explicate the locational adjectment processes of the manufacturing industries in Japan based on quantitative data of plant newly establishments, transfers, closures, and in-situ changes. The Japanese-style corporate governance system has drastically changed since the early 1990s. Leading corporation groups have been reorganized in response to the transformation of main bank relations and M & A has been aggressively utilized to survive competition in global markets. These changes in corporate organizational structures are accelerating selective plant closures and large employment decline in Japan's local areas. Recent significant recovery in the number of locations of new plants at homeland is due to corporate strategies, such as the need to concentrate of business functions and the need to keep core technologies in "mother factories".
The restructuring of corporate organization under globalization and the decrease in population have had powerful effects on Japan's regional structure. These changes since mid 1990s led to clear contrasts between growing metropolitan regions and declining local areas. Under these circumstances, Japanese national land policy and industrial location policy have experienced an important turning point. Instead of the local supporting policies which led to the decentralization of factories and the regional equilibrium by financial transfer, in dependence of the regional economy and enhancement of international competitiveness have been thought of as an important policy.
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