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Comparative advantage and pathways to financial development: evidence from Japan’s silk-reeling industry

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  • Mathias Hoffmann
  • Toshihiro Okubo

Abstract

We exploit the natural experiment of Japan’s opening to international trade to examine how comparative advantage can shape a country’s long-run path towards financial development. In the late 19th century, many of Japan’s prefectures had a natural comparative advantage in silk reeling. Producing silk for export required access to finance. At the same time, for technological reasons, borrower-quality in the silk reeling industry was notoriously hard to assess. Silk exporters overcame these frictions by forming local cooperative banks. We show that in the ancient silk prefectures, local cooperative banks continued to dominate local banking markets for over a century while bigger, country-wide banks came to dominate in other regions. By the late 20th century, the silk prefectures are indistinguishable from other regions in terms of their general level of financial development. However, our results suggest that they were effectively less financially integrated with the rest of the country. Hence, comparative advantage in silk favored the emergence of a banking-system dominated by small relationship lenders. But due to the local nature of these lenders, it also caused long-term geographical segmentation in banking markets.

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  • Mathias Hoffmann & Toshihiro Okubo, 2021. "Comparative advantage and pathways to financial development: evidence from Japan’s silk-reeling industry," IEW - Working Papers 387, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    • Handle: RePEc:zur:iewwpx:387
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    Cited by:

    1. Thomas Nitschka, 2009. "Momentum in stock market returns, risk premia on foreign currencies and international financial integration," IEW - Working Papers 405, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Comparative advantage; financial development; financial integration; Japan; banking history; trade credit; export finance; silk industry; relationship lending;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
    • F30 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - General
    • F40 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - General
    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
    • N15 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Asia including Middle East
    • N25 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - Asia including Middle East
    • O16 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance

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