Do Borders Matter? Evidence from Japanese Regional Net Capital Flows

Are international borders barriers to capital flows? We use evidence on net capital flows among regions within a country as a benchmark. For this purpose we develop a data set of saving and investment rates of Japanese prefectures. We find that the correlation between saving and investment rates is higher for OECD countries than for Japanese regions in both time- series and cross-sectional data. After controlling for factors that are expected to contribute to a positive correlation in the absence of barriers to capital flows, we conclude that primarily long-term capital flows are hindered by national borders, as reflected in the cross-sectional evidence.