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Contents Introduction

This paper attempts to look into the urban growth sources of major cities in Japan, Korea, and China, using separate panel data of respective countries. Available data sets across cities as well as across countries are mutually incongruous and diversified so widely. Nevertheless, efforts are made to selectively choose useful data and thus to identify the marginal effects of theoretically relevant variables on the urban growth in each respective country. The panel data set (consisting of 13 cities and 20 years) of Japan is relatively “long and wide” as compared to the Korean panel (7 cities and 21 years) which is called “long and narrow”. The Chinese panel set is “short and wide” with 64 cross-sectional units and two-year time series observations. Accounting for the urban growth source analysis using each country’s panel may provide us with some understanding of divergent contributions of factors in each country. The growth source analysis if founded on reliable data can be also used for making quantitative projections of future growth, taking account of causal interrelations between the growth sources. The contributions of factor productivity growth, physical capital, human capital, private and government spending, intra competitiveness, and cultural (ethnic) diversity are analyzed to prove quite robustness for both Japan and South Korea but for somewhat suspicious Chinese date.