Natural disasters and regional industrial production efficiency: evidence from pre-war Japan

Mohan, Preeya; Okubo, Toshihiro; Strobl, Eric (2023). Natural disasters and regional industrial production efficiency: evidence from pre-war Japan. Regional studies, 57(10), pp. 2054-2072. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group 10.1080/00343404.2022.2137485

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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 disaster events on changes in production efficiency. Our results show that earthquakes led to increases in efficiency for both machinery and textiles, although they were substantially greater for textiles due to the recovery persisting longer. Overall earthquakes contributed 6.8% of efficiency gains in textiles and 3.1% in machinery. However, allowing events to compound in their impact showed that such gains were dampened when there were damaging earthquakes in subsequent years. In contrast, for climate-related natural disaster events there is only weak, if any, evidence that these played a significant role in determining productive efficiency.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Department of Economics
10 Strategic Research Centers > Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR)

UniBE Contributor:

Strobl, Eric Albert

Subjects:

300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 330 Economics

ISSN:

0034-3404

Publisher:

Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group

Language:

English

Submitter:

Julia Alexandra Schlosser

Date Deposited:

01 Dec 2023 13:55

Last Modified:

01 Dec 2023 14:03

Publisher DOI:

10.1080/00343404.2022.2137485

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/189723

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/189723

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