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Prof. Junichi Yamasaki
Associate Professor at Graduate School of Economics
Kobe University

In-person business meetings are a critical driver of agglomeration benefits, yet the scarcity of data has hindered exploration into their nature. This study leverages a novel dataset obtained from a business card exchange application, used by 0.4 million workers in Tokyo, to examine the impact of geographical distance on business card exchanges and other types of business networks. By analyzing the moving of firms, we find a distinct pattern in how the frequency of business card exchanges decreases with distance, particularly noting a significant drop beyond a 500-meter radius.　Additionally, we observe that the rate of decline in these exchanges due to distance closely correlates with the level of industry agglomeration, and we find similar drops in other types of business networks such as patent collaborations. These findings highlight the pivotal role of very local interaction in fostering agglomeration benefits.