Let me inform you of the following research seminar.

Date: December 19  (Fri.)  , 2025 
Time: 5:20PM-6:50PM
Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B
Speaker: Atsushi Yamagishi (Hitotsubashi University)
Organizer: Masaki Takahashi
Language: English

Title:
Urbanization without Industrialization: Evidence from US Bases in Okinawa
Abstract:
We examine how the external consumption demand and employment shape the pattern of urbanization and the economic structure. We focus on the unique case of Okinawa in Japan, where many US military bases were constructed for strategic reasons and created substantial consumption demand and employment of local workers. Using newly digitized data, we first document rapid urbanization near the bases, driven by service sector expansion rather than manufacturing. We then develop a new quantitative spatial model and calibrate it to the Okinawan economy in 1970. Our counterfactual analysis highlights that the US-base sourced consumption and employment were crucial to urbanization without industrialization, which entailed large positive impacts on the aggregate income and welfare.