The FFJ is pleased to announce its forthcoming webinar with Ryo Kambayashi as the main speaker.

Consequence of hometown regiment: the Japanese case during the WWII

War sometimes made a huge gender imbalance in certain cohort and in certain areas. While it is a common idea that such gender imbalance may have moved the trajectory of economic development, the controversy is still inconclusive, because the market economy has a strong restoring force. We intend to contribute to this literature by introducing the Japanese experience during the second world war. Japan lost more than 2 million soldiers between 1938 and 1945. Since the Japan Imperial Army organized its main force as « hometown regiment », the loss of young male is concentrated in certain cohort of certain geographical areas. By exploiting the variation of changes in gender balance cohort-by-prefecture, we examined the loss of young male may affect the post-war industrial structure. What we found so far is that the reduction of gender ratio may have led to slower industrialization, though it is only to a limited degree in terms of quantity.

Abstract :
War sometimes made a huge gender imbalance in certain cohort and in certain areas. While it is a common idea that such gender imbalance may have moved the trajectory of economic development, the controversy is still inconclusive, because the market economy has a strong restoring force. We intend to contribute to this literature by introducing the Japanese experience during the second world war. Japan lost more than 2 million soldiers between 1938 and 1945. Since the Japan Imperial Army organized its main force as « hometown regiment », the loss of young male is concentrated in certain cohort of certain geographical areas. By exploiting the variation of changes in gender balance cohort-by-prefecture, we examined the loss of young male may affect the post-war industrial structure. What we found so far is that the reduction of gender ratio may have led to slower industrialization, though it is only to a limited degree in terms of quantity.

Speaker : Ryo Kambayashi (Professor, Hitotsubashi University)

Ryo Kambayashi is Professor at the Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University. His research field is labour economics, law and economics, Japanese economic history and institutional economics. He earned his PhD in economics from the Graduate School of Economics, University of Tokyo and was previously an Associate Professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University, a visiting scholar at the Department of Economics, Stanford University.

His publications include:

  • “The Minimum Wage in a Deflationary Economy: The Japanese Experience, 1994-2003” Labor Economics, Vol. 24, pp. 264-276, 2013, (with Daiji Kawaguchi and Ken Yamada)
  • “Incidence of Strict Quality Standards: Protection of Consumers or Windfall for Professionals?” Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 57, pp. 195-224, 2014, (with Daiji Kawaguchi and TetsushiMurao).

Discussant: Lionel Kesztenbaum (Senior researcher, INED)

Lionel Kesztenbaum is a senior researcher (Directeur de Recherche) at INED, the French National Demographic Institute. He is also an affiliated member of Paris School of Economics where he teaches economic history and historical demography. His research focuses on inequality in the long run, especially inequality in length of life and access to resources for elderly people.He has published papers in various scientific Journals (Explorations in Economic History; Genèse; The Journal of Economic History; Journal of Urban Economics; Population; etc.) and is one of the author of a book on historical data dedicated to 19th century France: L’enquête TRA : histoire d’un outil, outil d’histoire. Tome 1. 1793-1902, Éditions de l’Ined: Paris.

Program : here