Inter-regional air transport accessibility and macro-economic performance in Japan

Although there have been various studies on macro-economic effect of public investment, not much attention has been paid to the impact of actual accessibility realized by transport industry and infrastructure. In this paper, we performed a cross-sectional analysis of 47 prefectures in Japan between 1995 and 2000 by Cobb–Douglas production function and growth regression approach. The results explain why deregulation and infrastructure development in air transport during 1990s manifest mixed results of inter-regional accessibility and per-capita GDP growth for core and peripheral areas in Japan.