Do Borders Matter? Evidence from Japanese Regional Net Capital Flows
利用日本各县的储蓄和投资率数据，比较国内区域间与OECD国家间的资本流动，发现国家边界主要阻碍长期资本流动。
Are international borders barriers to capital flows? We use evidence on net capital flows among regions within a country as a benchmark. For this purpose we develop a data set of saving and investment rates of Japanese prefectures. We find that the correlation between saving and investment rates is higher for OECD countries than for Japanese regions in both time‐series and cross‐sectional data. After controlling for factors that are expected to contribute to a positive correlation in the absence of barriers to capital flows, we conclude that primarily long‐term capital flows are hindered by national borders, as reflected in the cross‐sectional evidence.