S9 Ep48: What price to save Japan's ghost towns?

In the oldest Japanese municipalities, close to half the residents are already over 65. As young people move to cities, the retailers close, then the clinics, then the bus that used to reach the next town. Rural Japan is not simply ageing: it is emptying. Elisa Giannone (CREI, CEPR) and her co-authors have analysed Japan's 1,741 municipalities from 1980 onwards. The oldest quarter of them lost…