Local and Neighboring Food Retail Supply and Population across Japan's Municipalities

This paper examines the relationship between food retail supply and resident population across Japanese municipalities. I develop a partial-equilibrium framework in which local food retail improves consumption convenience and population density supports retail entry. The framework allows positive local feedback and distinguishes local retail from neighboring consumption opportunities. Using Japan's 2010, 2015, and 2020 Population Censuses and the 2012, 2016, and 2021 Economic Censuses, I estimate municipality fixed-effects specifications with spatially lagged explanatory variables. Local and neighboring food and beverage retail supply (FRS) are positively associated with resident population. The corresponding coefficients are 0.0893 and 0.1364, respectively, and remain positive when prefecture-by-wave fixed effects are introduced. A common-sample comparison shows that the standardized local FRS association is stronger than that of food-service supply (FSS). The estimated local FRS relationship also varies across retail scale, although the magnitude of this nonlinearity and the negative slope at high establishment counts are sensitive to regional time effects and the estimation period.