Toshiharu Ishikawa – författare

This book clarifies the mechanisms of economicglobalization in changing industries’ locations and shows how industries’ locations have changedthrough those mechanisms. First, the book deals with the retailing industry.Introducing the concept of a contactprice into the market area analysis, it is shown in Part I that retailers’market areas and prices are changed in different ways by a reduction oftransportation costs. The mechanism of these changes is explained by checkingthe contact prices at apexes of the retailers’ market areas. Then the book movesto the manufacturing industry and deals with a firm’s production process. Part IIof the book shows the manner in which the production volume of factories withinan agglomeration is decreased as the number of factories within theagglomeration increases. Subsequently, considering the fact that many productionfactories depart from agglomerations to other sites to reduce production costs,a method of searching for a factory’s new site is proposed in which a firm can seekout an optimal location of a factory in a short period of time. By referring toa chaotic phenomenon, a firm sets a locationprospective area in a large geographical area and selects an optimallocation within that area. In the third part of the book the city system is thefocus. Part III elucidates the theoretical formation of a city system andanalyzes structural changes of a city system due to a reduction oftransportation costs. The mechanism of the change is explained by a flexible market area theory which studiesa city system by using the market areas established in the free-entry equilibrium.Then, the economic relationships between the cities within a city system areexamined from the point of view of the land rent in the cities’ areas. Thisanalysis shows the influences of a change in the largest city on other cities. Finally,the relationships between a city system and regional performance are examinedusing real data.The examination shows that the city system reveals the regionalperformance.

This book explains the roles of the industrial location in vitalizing regional economies in various economic environments created due to the progress of globalization. Here, this book elucidates the impact of industrial location and locational factors on regional economies. It clarifies the effects on industrial location of regulations and corporate tax. And the book explains the regional economic influence of the employment and agglomeration that are factors influencing the location. It also focuses on some countries and examines the relationships between the industrial location and the vitalization of regional economy in each country. This analysis covers the automotive and high-tech industries in the northeastern region of China, the impact of urban systems on regional development in the Philippines, and firms in revitalization in the northern region of Sweden. And it reveals achievements and challenges in each region. Finally, the book clarifies that the level of achievement inregional development is related to the educational environment. It also suggests that the industrial composition of a region is influenced by the level of regional cooperation with other regions. The analyses in the book show that a region must select the industries that match its newly emerged regional characteristics for vitalization.

This book analyzes role of industrial agglomeration in regional economy. The analysis shows the functions of the agglomeration in two stages of economic development, before and after the globalization. This analysis is followed by verification of the effectiveness of the agglomeration analysis by using Japanese economic data. First, the book clarifies that the agglomeration contributes to reducing the production costs though the land-based economies. In line with the minimum-cost logic, it is shown that the market competition modes that minimizes the delivery prices to the consumers comes to prevail in the spatial goods market. Secondly, the book explains that firms'' production processes are fragmented by connection economies and the land-based economies of the agglomeration. The fragmentation increases the differentiation among workers and between the regions. And then, it increases the opportunity for government to intervene in the industrial locations. In this intervention, industrial parks that provide agglomeration economies become important as a means of the policy. The final part of the book shows that the inspection using the regional economic data in Japan supports the effectiveness of the analysis using the concepts of the connection economies and the land-based agglomeration economies. Lastly, an industrial policy based on the results derived by the analysis is proposed for the regions in the rural area.