Title: Analysis of productivity in Japanese information service industries

Authors: Kazunori Minetaki

Addresses: Kansai University, 3-3-35, Yamate-cho, Suita-shi, 564-8680 Osaka, Japan

Abstract: The main purpose of this paper is to examine whether the natural selection mechanism (NSM) works properly in Japanese information service industries from 1997 to 2002 including the period of IT boom and the period of the collapse of IT bubble. Our empirical study suggests that there exist serious problems in the working of market mechanism, especially in the period of severe recessions. We can find that productive firms, rather than unproductive firms, are on the average driven out of the market in severe recessions. It shows that the natural selection mechanism (NSM) dose not work well in Japanese information service industries. Further, we deeply research prefecture level. Some prefectures show the new firms with high productivity growth come in and the cluster of new type of information service firms are formed in the period of the collapse of IT bubble.

Keywords: information service industry; natural selection mechanism; NSM; productivity; clusters; Japan; information technology; recession; prefectures; information services.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWET.2009.031011

International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology, 2009 Vol.5 No.3, pp.295 - 312

Published online: 17 Jan 2010 *

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