Toshihiro Okubo
Biographic Data
| ID | 3705722 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Toshihiro Okubo |
| GIVEN NAMES | Toshihiro |
| FAMILY NAME | Okubo |
| SIGNATURE | OKUBO T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Keio University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2795-1706 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 34 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
FDI Spillovers in History
We estimate productivity spillovers from Japanese cotton-spinning firms in China (known as Zaikabo) to local Chinese cotton-spinning mills based on plant-level data for 1925 to 1938. In order to capture the important role of distance in facilitating such spillovers we geo-localised the plants. Our results provide clear evidence for positive spillovers from Zaikabo to local Chinese mills, which go hand-in-hand with an upgrade in production technol…
Bonding social capital, disaster experience, and post‐disaster giving in Japan
When are people willing to donate their time or money after a disaster? We investigate the psychological and socio‐economic determinants of post‐disaster giving in Japan, using a nationally representative panel survey of more than 7,000 respondents, conducted repeatedly from early 2020, including after the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake. We examine how individual characteristics—including past disaster experience, social capital (trust, reciproci…
Branch banking and regional financial markets
In Japan in the 1920s, several financial crises and government policy led to bank mergers and the consolidation and expansion of branch networks. Using unique historical bank branch-level lending and deposit data, we show that branch banking integrated peripheral markets with the rest of the country, with large urban banks – those headquartered in Tokyo and Osaka – using deposit supply shocks in peripheral areas to fund lending in their core mark…
Vaccination decisions and social capital in Japan
The COVID-19 vaccines played a pivotal role in safeguarding many people. Yet, vaccine hesitancy remained a significant barrier to increasing coverage rates, as many high-income countries faced prolonged vaccine refusal campaigns. In Japan, vaccine doses were administered under a reservation system accessible via a website and by phone. Achieving a high vaccination coverage for a vaccine that was offered at no financial cost was surprisingly diffi…
Large Fires and the Rise of Fire Insurance in Early Twentieth-Century Japan
We explore the role that large fires played in the early development of the Japanese fire insurance industry. Using a prefecture-level data set spanning 30 years, our econometric analysis shows that large fires led to an increase in new policies and policy renewals, consistent with historical narratives that insurance companies used these events to advertise their business. We also show that this subsequent surge in policies led to more small fir…
Tourism and tax revenue
This paper investigated the impact of international stay-over arrivals on tax revenue for tourism-dependent Small Island Developing States (SIDS). To this end, we constructed a unique monthly panel data set of stay-over arrivals and tax revenue and its various components for the period 2002–2018 for Eastern Caribbean SIDS. A Bartik-type instrumental variables estimator exploiting differences in the exposure to and the extent of shocks in the orig…
Are software automation and teleworker substitutes? Preliminary evidence from Japan
Digital technology is reshaping workplaces by enabling spatial separation of offices, known as telework, or remote intelligence (RI) and by facilitating automation of service sector tasks via artificial intelligence (AI). This paper is the first attempt to empirically investigate whether AI and RI are complements or substitutes in the service sector. It uses a worker‐level panel of surveys collected from around 10,000 workers from pre‐COVID‐19 pa…
Trade, location, and multi-product firms
In this paper we study how trade liberalization affects the location and the product scope of firms. We find that the largest and most productive multi-product firms concentrate to the larger market as a result of trade liberalization. In the presence of relocation costs, we also find that these firms will expand their product scope in the larger market while firms in the smaller market will contract their product scope or expand it to a smaller …
The Japanese textile sector and the influenza pandemic of 1918–1920
The ongoing global pandemic has brought into sharp relief the possible interactions between the epidemiology of a virus, the structure of the economy and society that becomes exposed to it, and the actions chosen by government, individuals, and communities to combat it or ameliorate its economic impact. Surprisingly, there has not been sufficient research on these economic and policy interactions of the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic—the deadliest …
Social Norms and Preventive Behaviors in Japan and Germany During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Background: According to a recent paper by Gelfand et al., COVID-19 infection and case mortality rates are closely connected to the strength of social norms: "Tighter" cultures that abide by strict social norms are more successful in combating the pandemic than "looser" cultures that are more permissive. However, countries with similar levels of cultural tightness exhibit big differences in mortality rates. We are investigating potential explanat…
Traveling and eating out during the Covid-19 pandemic
Natural disasters and regional industrial production efficiency
In this paper we investigate whether destruction due to natural disasters induces industries to increase their regional production efficiency using the case of pre-war Japan, a setting of frequent disasters and technological upgrading. To this end we compile a regional sectoral dataset of natural disaster destruction and production for machinery and textiles. We then employ a stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) approach to estimate the role of dis…
Public preferences on immigration in Japan
Natural disasters, firm survival, and growth
This paper investigates the damage impact of the 1959 Ise Bay Typhoon on firm survival and survivor performance in Nagoya City, Japan. We combine firm‐level data with a local damage proxy storm surge‐induced flooding. We find that firms in retail and wholesale were less and those in manufacturing more likely to survive after being flooding. There was some evidence of spillover effects from nearby regions on firm exit. Surviving firm performance w…
Creative Destruction of Industries
The Great Kanto Earthquake occurred on 1 September 1923 and inflicted serious damage on Yokohama City. About 90 percent of the factories in Yokohama City were burnt down or completely destroyed. However, these manufacturing industries appear to have swiftly recovered in the aftermath of the damage. This article investigates the role of creative destruction due to the Great Kanto Earthquake. Using firm-level data on capital (horsepower of motors) …
Natural disasters and spatial heterogeneity in damages
In this paper, we use the 1995 Kobe earthquake as a natural experiment to examine the impact of a large exogenous physical shock on local economic activity. For the first time we are able to control for local spatial heterogeneity in the damage caused by a natural disaster using geo-coded plant location and unique building-level surveys. In a survival analysis of manufacturing plants, our results show that building-level damage significantly affe…
Interregional labour migration and real wage disparities
Skew Productivity Distributions and Agglomeration
Okubo T. and Tomiura E. Skew productivity distributions and agglomeration: evidence from plant-level data, Regional Studies. This paper empirically examines how the shapes of plant productivity distributions vary across regions based on Japan's manufacturing census. It focuses on the skewness to examine the asymmetry by estimating the gamma distribution at the plant level. By linking the estimated shape parameters with economic geography variable…
The spatial selection of heterogeneous firms
Trade, environmental regulations and industrial mobility
Heterogeneous firms, agglomeration and economic geography
A Melitz-style model of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms is integrated into a simple New Economic Geography model to show that the standard assumption of identical firms is neither necessary nor innocuous. We show that re-locating to the big region is most attractive for the most productive firms; this implies interesting results for empirical work and policy analysis. A 'selection effect' means standard empirical measures overes…
Heterogeneous firms, agglomeration and economic geography
A Melitz-style model of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms is integrated into a simple New Economic Geography model to show that the standard assumption of identical firms is neither necessary nor innocuous. We show that re-locating to the big region is most attractive for the most productive firms; this implies interesting results for empirical work and policy analysis. A 'selection effect' means standard empirical measures overes…
Creative Destruction of Industries
The Great Kanto Earthquake occurred on 1 September 1923 and inflicted serious damage on Yokohama City. About 90 percent of the factories in Yokohama City were burnt down or completely destroyed. However, these manufacturing industries appear to have swiftly recovered in the aftermath of the damage. This article investigates the role of creative destruction due to the Great Kanto Earthquake. Using firm-level data on capital (horsepower of motors) …
Natural disasters and spatial heterogeneity in damages
In this paper, we use the 1995 Kobe earthquake as a natural experiment to examine the impact of a large exogenous physical shock on local economic activity. For the first time we are able to control for local spatial heterogeneity in the damage caused by a natural disaster using geo-coded plant location and unique building-level surveys. In a survival analysis of manufacturing plants, our results show that building-level damage significantly affe…
Natural disasters and regional industrial production efficiency
In this paper we investigate whether destruction due to natural disasters induces industries to increase their regional production efficiency using the case of pre-war Japan, a setting of frequent disasters and technological upgrading. To this end we compile a regional sectoral dataset of natural disaster destruction and production for machinery and textiles. We then employ a stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) approach to estimate the role of dis…
Interregional labour migration and real wage disparities
Skew Productivity Distributions and Agglomeration
Okubo T. and Tomiura E. Skew productivity distributions and agglomeration: evidence from plant-level data, Regional Studies. This paper empirically examines how the shapes of plant productivity distributions vary across regions based on Japan's manufacturing census. It focuses on the skewness to examine the asymmetry by estimating the gamma distribution at the plant level. By linking the estimated shape parameters with economic geography variable…
Heterogeneous firms, agglomeration and economic geography
A Melitz-style model of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms is integrated into a simple New Economic Geography model to show that the standard assumption of identical firms is neither necessary nor innocuous. We show that re-locating to the big region is most attractive for the most productive firms; this implies interesting results for empirical work and policy analysis. A 'selection effect' means standard empirical measures overes…
The spatial selection of heterogeneous firms
Trade, environmental regulations and industrial mobility
Skew Productivity Distributions and Agglomeration
Okubo T. and Tomiura E. Skew productivity distributions and agglomeration: evidence from plant-level data, Regional Studies. This paper empirically examines how the shapes of plant productivity distributions vary across regions based on Japan's manufacturing census. It focuses on the skewness to examine the asymmetry by estimating the gamma distribution at the plant level. By linking the estimated shape parameters with economic geography variable…
Interregional labour migration and real wage disparities
Natural disasters and spatial heterogeneity in damages
In this paper, we use the 1995 Kobe earthquake as a natural experiment to examine the impact of a large exogenous physical shock on local economic activity. For the first time we are able to control for local spatial heterogeneity in the damage caused by a natural disaster using geo-coded plant location and unique building-level surveys. In a survival analysis of manufacturing plants, our results show that building-level damage significantly affe…
Creative Destruction of Industries
The Great Kanto Earthquake occurred on 1 September 1923 and inflicted serious damage on Yokohama City. About 90 percent of the factories in Yokohama City were burnt down or completely destroyed. However, these manufacturing industries appear to have swiftly recovered in the aftermath of the damage. This article investigates the role of creative destruction due to the Great Kanto Earthquake. Using firm-level data on capital (horsepower of motors) …
Public preferences on immigration in Japan
Natural disasters, firm survival, and growth
This paper investigates the damage impact of the 1959 Ise Bay Typhoon on firm survival and survivor performance in Nagoya City, Japan. We combine firm‐level data with a local damage proxy storm surge‐induced flooding. We find that firms in retail and wholesale were less and those in manufacturing more likely to survive after being flooding. There was some evidence of spillover effects from nearby regions on firm exit. Surviving firm performance w…
Social Norms and Preventive Behaviors in Japan and Germany During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Background: According to a recent paper by Gelfand et al., COVID-19 infection and case mortality rates are closely connected to the strength of social norms: "Tighter" cultures that abide by strict social norms are more successful in combating the pandemic than "looser" cultures that are more permissive. However, countries with similar levels of cultural tightness exhibit big differences in mortality rates. We are investigating potential explanat…
Traveling and eating out during the Covid-19 pandemic
Natural disasters and regional industrial production efficiency
In this paper we investigate whether destruction due to natural disasters induces industries to increase their regional production efficiency using the case of pre-war Japan, a setting of frequent disasters and technological upgrading. To this end we compile a regional sectoral dataset of natural disaster destruction and production for machinery and textiles. We then employ a stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) approach to estimate the role of dis…
Trade, location, and multi-product firms
In this paper we study how trade liberalization affects the location and the product scope of firms. We find that the largest and most productive multi-product firms concentrate to the larger market as a result of trade liberalization. In the presence of relocation costs, we also find that these firms will expand their product scope in the larger market while firms in the smaller market will contract their product scope or expand it to a smaller …
The Japanese textile sector and the influenza pandemic of 1918–1920
The ongoing global pandemic has brought into sharp relief the possible interactions between the epidemiology of a virus, the structure of the economy and society that becomes exposed to it, and the actions chosen by government, individuals, and communities to combat it or ameliorate its economic impact. Surprisingly, there has not been sufficient research on these economic and policy interactions of the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic—the deadliest …
Tourism and tax revenue
This paper investigated the impact of international stay-over arrivals on tax revenue for tourism-dependent Small Island Developing States (SIDS). To this end, we constructed a unique monthly panel data set of stay-over arrivals and tax revenue and its various components for the period 2002–2018 for Eastern Caribbean SIDS. A Bartik-type instrumental variables estimator exploiting differences in the exposure to and the extent of shocks in the orig…
Are software automation and teleworker substitutes? Preliminary evidence from Japan
Digital technology is reshaping workplaces by enabling spatial separation of offices, known as telework, or remote intelligence (RI) and by facilitating automation of service sector tasks via artificial intelligence (AI). This paper is the first attempt to empirically investigate whether AI and RI are complements or substitutes in the service sector. It uses a worker‐level panel of surveys collected from around 10,000 workers from pre‐COVID‐19 pa…
Branch banking and regional financial markets
In Japan in the 1920s, several financial crises and government policy led to bank mergers and the consolidation and expansion of branch networks. Using unique historical bank branch-level lending and deposit data, we show that branch banking integrated peripheral markets with the rest of the country, with large urban banks – those headquartered in Tokyo and Osaka – using deposit supply shocks in peripheral areas to fund lending in their core mark…
Vaccination decisions and social capital in Japan
The COVID-19 vaccines played a pivotal role in safeguarding many people. Yet, vaccine hesitancy remained a significant barrier to increasing coverage rates, as many high-income countries faced prolonged vaccine refusal campaigns. In Japan, vaccine doses were administered under a reservation system accessible via a website and by phone. Achieving a high vaccination coverage for a vaccine that was offered at no financial cost was surprisingly diffi…
Large Fires and the Rise of Fire Insurance in Early Twentieth-Century Japan
We explore the role that large fires played in the early development of the Japanese fire insurance industry. Using a prefecture-level data set spanning 30 years, our econometric analysis shows that large fires led to an increase in new policies and policy renewals, consistent with historical narratives that insurance companies used these events to advertise their business. We also show that this subsequent surge in policies led to more small fir…
FDI Spillovers in History
We estimate productivity spillovers from Japanese cotton-spinning firms in China (known as Zaikabo) to local Chinese cotton-spinning mills based on plant-level data for 1925 to 1938. In order to capture the important role of distance in facilitating such spillovers we geo-localised the plants. Our results provide clear evidence for positive spillovers from Zaikabo to local Chinese mills, which go hand-in-hand with an upgrade in production technol…
Bonding social capital, disaster experience, and post‐disaster giving in Japan
When are people willing to donate their time or money after a disaster? We investigate the psychological and socio‐economic determinants of post‐disaster giving in Japan, using a nationally representative panel survey of more than 7,000 respondents, conducted repeatedly from early 2020, including after the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake. We examine how individual characteristics—including past disaster experience, social capital (trust, reciproci…
Economics (15 works) · Business (11 works) · Economic geography (8 works) · Geography (8 works) · Microeconomics (6 works) · Regional Economics and Spatial Analysis (6 works) · Global trade and economics (5 works) · Productivity (5 works) · Economies of agglomeration (4 works) · Engineering (4 works)