Impact of public capital on the manufacturing productive performance of Japanese industries

The paper analyses the impact of public capital on the Japanese manufacturi ng industries from 1970 to 1995. Unlike previous studies, which are based m ostly on economy-wide analysis, this study is based on a disaggregated anal ysis at the industry level. A Generalized Leontief cost function is utilize d to estimate the impact of public capital on nine manufacturing industries in Japan. The results indicate that public capital offers no insignificant contribution to the productive performance of these manufacturing industri es except for Paper, Textiles and Transport. The paper also suggests that t he bubble economy in the 1980s is the contributing factor behind this insig nificant effect of public capital.