Understanding Industrialization, Entrepreneurship, and Technology Adoption in Emerging Economies: New Evidence from Historical Japanese firms

A major limitation to economic analyses of developing countries is their reliance on highly aggregated data, anecdotal evidence, and case studies. The lack of documentation for small establishments or firms in nonstrategic sectors makes it difficult to empirically test hypotheses on determinants of entrepreneurship, technology adoption, and industrial change. This project develops a new and more economicallyrepresentative dataset of nineteenth century Japanese firms, using hitherto unused archival records of firm genealogies and financial reports. By applying modern econometric techniques to these data, I re-evaluate conventional wisdom about Japanese modernization and give insight to how emerging economies successfully industrialize.