Technology, Institution, and Regional Growth: Evidence from Mineral Mining Industry in Industrializing Japan

Abstract: Coal extraction was an influential economic activity in interwar Japan. At the initial stage, coal mines had used not only males but also females as the miners worked in the pits. The innovation of labor-saving technologies and the renewal of traditional extraction methodology, however, induced the institutional change through the revision of labor regulations on the female miners in the early 1930s. This dramatically changed the mines as the place where skilled males were the principal miners engaged in the underground works. I investigate the impact of coal mining on the regional growth and assess how the institutional change induced by the labor regulations affected its process. By linking the location information of mines with registration- and census-based statistics, I found that coal mines led to the remarkable population growths. The labor regulations did not stagnate but accelerated the local population growth as it had forced female miners to exist from labor market and to form their families. The regulations prohibited risky underground works by the female miners. This reduction in the occupational hazards also led to the improvements in the early-life mortality via the mortality selection mechanism in utero.