IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ime/imedps/19-e-07.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Interpolation of Japan's Household Consumption during World War II

Author

Listed:
  • Ryoji Koike

    (Director and Senior Economist, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan (E-mail: ryouji.koike@boj.or.jp))

Abstract

This paper reconstructs a comparable series of Japan's household consumption in the 1940s, using historical records about household outlays and black-market transactions, and interpolating missing values in the existing statistics. Specifically, nominal outlays of urban and farm households are estimated, and then converted into real outlays by effective price indexes containing black-market transactions. Household outlay per capita is then computed by taking the average of urban and farm household outlays using population shares as weights. Real outlay in 1945 is estimated at a little less than 50 percent compared to that in 1940, although statistics are missing for 1945. Even considering alternative estimates using other records, real outlay in 1945 is a little more than 50 percent compared to that in 1940. Thus, it is concluded that Japan's household consumption in 1945 declined to the level in 1875-1880.

Suggested Citation

  • Ryoji Koike, 2019. "Interpolation of Japan's Household Consumption during World War II," IMES Discussion Paper Series 19-E-07, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    • Handle: RePEc:ime:imedps:19-e-07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.imes.boj.or.jp/research/papers/english/19-E-07.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Huff, Gregg & Majima, Shinobu (ed.), 2018. "World War II Singapore," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9789814722629.
    2. Masato Shizume, 2018. "Black Market Prices during World War II in Japan: An Estimate Using the Hedonic Approach," IMES Discussion Paper Series 18-E-17, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    3. Makoto Saito, 2021. "Central Banknotes and Black Markets: The Case of the Japanese Economy During and Immediately After World War II," Advances in Japanese Business and Economics, in: Strong Money Demand in Financing War and Peace, pages 25-56, Springer.
    4. Higgs, Robert, 1992. "Wartime Prosperity? A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in the 1940s," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(1), pages 41-60, March.
    5. Kiyohito Utsunomiya, 2008. "Economic Fluctuations in Japan during the Interwar Period: Re- Estimation of the LTES Personal Consumption Expenditures," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 26, pages 131-158, December.
    6. Kiyohito Utsunomiya, 2008. "Economic Fluctuations in Japan during the Interwar Period -- Re- estimations of the LTES Personal," IMES Discussion Paper Series 08-E-06, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eric B. Schneider & Kota Ogasawara & Tim J. Cole, 2021. "Health Shocks, Recovery, and the First Thousand Days: The Effect of the Second World War on Height Growth in Japanese Children," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 47(4), pages 1075-1105, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fetter, Daniel K., 2016. "The Home Front: Rent Control and the Rapid Wartime Increase in Home Ownership," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 76(4), pages 1001-1043, December.
    2. Hugh Rockoff, 2016. "The U.S. Economy in WWII as a Model for Coping with Climate Change," NBER Working Papers 22590, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Stefano Fenoaltea, 2018. "Spleen: the failures of the cliometric school," HHB Working Papers Series 14, The Historical Household Budgets Project.
    4. Hugh Rockoff, 2019. "On the Controversies behind the Origins of the Federal Economic Statistics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(1), pages 147-164, Winter.
    5. Baubeau, Patrice & Teixeira, Mateo, 2024. "Inflation without politics: how French prices outsmarted bullets, 1938-1949," MPRA Paper 121621, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 01 Aug 2024.
    6. Omar, Ayman M.A. & Lambe, Brendan J & Wisniewski, Tomasz Piotr, 2021. "Perceptions of the threat to national security and the stock market," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 186(C), pages 504-522.
    7. Zdenka Johnson, 2022. "The Role of Federal Government in the United States War Economy during World War II [Role federální vlády ve válečné ekonomice Spojených států amerických během druhé světové války]," E-LOGOS, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2022(2), pages 23-47.
    8. Malpezzi, Stephen & Maclennan, Duncan, 2001. "The Long-Run Price Elasticity of Supply of New Residential Construction in the United States and the United Kingdom," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 278-306, September.
    9. Juan-Pierré BRUWER & André VAN DEN BERG, 2017. "The conduciveness of the South African economic environment and Small, Medium and Micro Enterprise sustainability: A literature review," Expert Journal of Business and Management, Sprint Investify, vol. 5(1), pages 1-12.
    10. Stephen FERRIS & Marcel-Cristian VOIA, 2022. "Do Rival Political Parties Enforce Government Efficiency? Evidence from Canada, 1867 - 2021," LEO Working Papers / DR LEO 2948, Orleans Economics Laboratory / Laboratoire d'Economie d'Orleans (LEO), University of Orleans.
    11. Alexander J. Field, 2008. "The impact of the Second World War on US productivity growth1," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 61(3), pages 672-694, August.
    12. Tetsuji Okazaki, 2022. "Controlling Funds Allocation for the War: The Experience of Japan in the Late 1930s," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-1191, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    13. Brian Kent Strow & Claudia Wood Strow, 2013. "Gross Actual Product: Why GDP Fosters Increased Government Spending and Should Be Replaced," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 29(Fall 2013), pages 53-71.
    14. Alexander J. Field, 2023. "The decline of US manufacturing productivity between 1941 and 1948," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 76(4), pages 1163-1190, November.
    15. Ferris, J. Stephen & Voia, Marcel-Cristian, 2023. "Do rival political parties enforce government efficiency? Evidence from Canada 1867–2021," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    16. Harrison, Mark, 2011. "Capitalism at War," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 60, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    17. Thomas L. Hogan & Daniel J. Smith, 2022. "War, money & economy: Inflation and production in the Fed and pre-Fed periods," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 35(1), pages 15-37, March.
    18. Vlad Tarko, 2020. "Understanding post-communist transitions: the relevance of Austrian economics," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 33(1), pages 163-186, March.
    19. Giampaolo Garzarelli & Lyndal Keeton & Aldo A. Sitoe, 2022. "Rights redistribution and COVID-19 lockdown policy," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 54(1), pages 5-36, August.
    20. Hugh Rockoff, 2020. "Off to a Good Start: The NBER and the Measurement of National Income," NBER Working Papers 26895, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Household survey; Black-market prices; Effective prices; In- kind outlay; World War II;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N35 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Asia including Middle East
    • Y10 - Miscellaneous Categories - - Data: Tables and Charts - - - Data: Tables and Charts
    • D19 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Other
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ime:imedps:19-e-07. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kinken (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imegvjp.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.