Supporting Peripheral Economies or Industrial Policy in Favour of National Growth? An Empirically Based Analysis of Goal Achievement of the Japanese ‘Technopolis’ Program

Since the early 1980s, R&D-intensive industries have been a major concern of economic and technology policy in all highly industrialized countries. This includes Japan where, typically, especially strong economic disparities exist between the megalopolis of Tokyo–Nagoya–Osaka and the rest of the country. The main objectives of the ‘Technopolis’ Program of the Japanese national government, implemented in the mid-1980s, were—and still are—the introduction of technology into all sectors of the national economy and the reduction of the disparities between the individual parts of the country. On the basis of hitherto unpublished data on each one of the twenty-six technopolises, in this paper I analyse their chances of success and draw conclusions regarding the regional–political value of the Technopolis strategy. One of the most important results of this analysis is the discovery of a strong and negative correlation between the success of the twenty-six sites and their distance from the Japanese core region around Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya.