Saggi di storia economica e industrializzazione: l'economia coloniale della Malesia e la diffusione della tecnologia in Giappone

This thesis comprises three chapters, all single-authored. It explores diverse aspects of industrial and economic development in historical contexts. The first chapter evaluates the persistence of urban centers created for specific economic purposes in British Malaya. The second chapter investigates the long-term socio-economic impacts of colonial land use policies in Colonial Malaya. The final chapter examines the organization of production and the role of labor in the Japanese cotton spinning industry during the Meiji era. Chapter 1 investigates the long-term viability and persistence of towns established for rubber planting and tin extraction in British Malaya. By leveraging historical population and economic data spanning from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, I analyze the role of founding economic activity in determining urban resilience. Despite the historical importance of tin, my findings indicate that only rubber towns exhibit significant population persistence beyond the decline of their founding economic activities. This persistence is attributed to the stronger linkages between rubber cultivation and Malaysia’s export-led industrialization during the mid-20th century. In contrast, tin towns did not experience such transformation due to the weaker industrial synergies of mining activities. These results emphasize the critical role of initial economic activities in shaping long-term urban trajectories, demonstrating how some forms of economic activity are more conducive to structural transformation than others. Chapter 2 examines the economic consequences of Malay Reservations, a colonial policy that restricted land ownership and agricultural activities in British Malaya. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design with reservation borders as the cutoff, I document the persistent socio-economic deficits in areas designated as Malay Reservations. Households in these areas exhibit lower living standards, reflected in reduced access to modern amenities, lower-quality housing, and higher reliance on primary-sector activities. Additionally, employing the Synthetic Control Method, I find that districts with higher reservation density received significantly less public infrastructure investment, as colonial policies often tied spending to commercial viability. This chapter provides evidence that colonial land-use restrictions hindered economic development, perpetuating disparities long after the policy’s implementation. Chapter 3 explores the organization of production in the Japanese cotton spinning industry during the Meiji era, focusing on the role of skilled labor scarcity and technological diffusion. Using plant-level data from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, I investigate how firms reorganized production in response to external shocks, such as the expansion of railroads. My findings reveal that skilled labor scarcity initially constrained firm productivity, resulting in high dispersion across the productivity distribution. However, as railroads alleviated labor constraints, firms adopted more standardized production methods, reducing dispersion and raising aggregate productivity. These dynamics underscore the importance of labor market conditions and external infrastructure investments in shaping industrial organization and accelerating technological adoption. Together, these chapters shed light on how economic policies, structural constraints, and labor dynamics influence industrialization and economic development. By integrating firm-level, district-level, and urban-level analyses across diverse historical contexts, this thesis advances our understanding of the mechanisms underlying economic resilience and transformation. Chapters are ordered chronologically. An appendix is provided at the end.