Abstract
The economic effects of beef cattle production on the local economy are not limited to the beef cattle sector; backward and forward linkage effects ripple through other sectors. We evaluated the linkage effects of Wagyu beef production in Shiga Prefecture. The findings are: (1) the backward and forward linkage effects are 10,950- and 14,324- million yen, respectively, which are 1.18- and 1.54-times the value of Wagyu beef production; (2) the backward linkage effect rippling within the prefecture is limited to 15.0% of the total effect, whereas the forward linkage effect rippling within the prefecture is 76.7% of the total effect.
