Shizuka Inoue

Opinion is sharply divided about whether the bombing of an enemy's civilian targets and the killing of their combatants result in an adversary's population becoming pacifist or pro-military. Identification is difficult because natural experiments are rare, and effects may be heterogeneous. For example, killing enemy combatants may create martyrs, while targeting civilians may lower their pro-war morale. We solve this problem by leveraging a natural experiment in Japan in which military casualties and urban destruction varied exogenously, but differentially, across cities. We then estimate the impact of devastation and slaughter on support for Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, which aims to revise Japan's constitution to enable it to rearm. We find contrasting effects of targeting soldiers and civilians—military deaths induce future pro-military voting, while urban destruction induces pacifist voting. Moreover, these effects persist long after most people with direct experience of the war have died.

Poor countries have many workers in self-employment or small single-unit firms whereas rich countries have much more employment in large multi-establishment firms. I study how manager supply shapes this transition using Japan's post-WWII repatriation of six million people. Cities receiving white-collar repatriates had higher output per worker, shifted workers into wage employment and saw firms expand across cities. I develop a model in which firms are constrained by owner managerial capacity and modern firms hire managers whose headquarters services are non-rival across establishments. The estimated model implies that manager inflow increased output per worker by 5.5 percent between 1950 and 1970, with about one-third of the effect operating through multi-establishment networks.