The Effect of Education Subsidies in an Aging Economy

We examine how an introduction of education subsidies affects growth rates, incorporating an uncertain lifetime. We demonstrate that the introduction of subsidies engenders higher growth rates in aging economies, except when the education-tax rate is sufficiently low.Education subsidies; Social security; Uncertain lifetime

"Measuring Fiscal Needs: Japan's Experiences"

The Local Allocation Tax (LAT) plays important role in fiscal equalization in Japan. The purpose of this paper is twofold: reviewing the key themes and issues of the LAT; and considering package of reforms designed to revitalize Japan's fiscal equalization program and to establish a sustainable basis for the future. We argue that the addressing expenditure needs in equalization should be retained, to do so will require improvement in the way of addressing expenditure needs. In addition, The LAT formula should be redesigned so as to encourage local government to deliver services in the most cost-effective manner. First, it should be based more systematically on objective criteria (e.g. size of school age population, remoteness indices) rather than actual endowment, such as public infrastructure. Second, the reliance on discretionary elements, including special LAT and various aspects of modification coefficient used in the LAT calculation, should be reduced and, in general, the formula made more transparent.

"Subnational Borrowing in Japan : from 'Implicit Guarantee' to Market Discipline and Fiscal Rule"

In many countries, local borrowing is an important source for long-term development projects such as roads, bridges, and waterworks. Local borrowing for such projects is justified on the ground that benefit of these projects often last decades and the cost of these projects should be borne by future tax payers. However, there are serious concerns with issuance of local bonds by decentralized local governments. Local governments in Japan would not default on their borrowing because of such "implicit government guarantee." As a result, lenders and tax payers have lost incentive to monitor subnational government because they view their investment as protected by a central government. The purpose of this paper is to review the local borrowing in Japan. At first, the transition from administrative control to rule-based, market oriented system is described. Following this, soft budget constraint and effectiveness of market discipline is investigated. Third, bank lending and local bonds as a way of financing long-term infrastructures are compared. Finally, we shed light on the credibility of local bonds in Japan and offer some proposals.

Child-allowances, fertility, and uncertain lifetime

We examine how child-allowance policies with pay-as-you-go systems affect fertility and growth rates. This study demonstrates that when a government initiates a child-allowance policy using some part of the pension budget, the fertility rate declines in aging economies.Uncertain lifetime, Child allowances, Fertility, Social security, Human capital

Educational loan and human capital accumulation in a small open economy

Cartiglia (1997) shows that trade increases human capital investment in developing countries unless there are credit markets for individuals. In this paper, when households can borrow the education cost from a market, a trade-induced decrease in the skilled wage leads to less human capital investment in developing countries.Capital market imperfection

Transient vibration analysis of a completely free plate using modes obtained by Gorman's superposition method

This paper shows that the transient response of a plate undergoing flexural vibration can be calculated accurately and efficiently using the natural frequencies and modes obtained from the superposition method. The response of a completely free plate is used to demonstrate this. The case considered is one where all supports of a simply supported thin rectangular plate under self weight are suddenly removed. The resulting motion consists of a combination of the natural modes of a completely free plate. The modal superposition method is used for determining the transient response, and the natural frequencies and mode shapes of the plates used are obtained by Gorman's superposition method. These are compared with corresponding results based on the modes using the Rayleigh–Ritz method using the ordinary and degenerated free–free beam functions. There is an excellent agreement between the results from both approaches but the superposition method has shown faster convergence and the results may serve as benchmarks for the transient response of completely free plates

Free vibration analysis of plates and shells by using the Superposition Method

This thesis is devoted to investigate the capability of the Superposition Method for obtaining the transient response of plates and the natural frequencies of thin doubly curved shallow shells. The Superposition Method gives accurate results with only a few terms and has proved to be efficient for both cases. To investigate the transient response, all supports of a thin simply supported rectangular plate under self weight are suddenly removed. The resulting motion comprises a combination of the natural modes of a completely free plate. The modal superposition method is used for determining the transient response. The modes and natural frequencies of the plate are obtained using the Superposition Method and the Rayleigh-Ritz method with the ordinary and degenerated free-free beam functions. The W–W algorithm is then used to delimit the natural frequencies from the frequency equation derived in a determinantal form. There is an excellent agreement between the results from both approaches but the modes based on the Superposition Method result in more accurate values with fewer terms, and have shown faster convergence. The results from the Superposition Method may serve as benchmarks for the transient response of completely free plates. The transient response is found to be dominated by the lower modes. The centre of vibration is shifted parallel from the original xy plane by the distance of the first mode of the plate (a rigid body translation) multiplied by the first transient coefficient. In the investigation of doubly curved shells, the natural frequency parameters of thin shallow shells with three different sets of boundary conditions were obtained for several different curvature ratios and two aspect ratios. The solutions to the building blocks, which are subject to simply-supported out-of-plane conditions and shear diaphragm in-plane conditions at all four edges, are represented by series of sine and cosine functions, generated using Galerkin’s method since an exact solution is not available for the doubly curved shells. Once displacement functions for the building blocks are obtained, the prescribed boundary conditions of the actual shell under investigation are then satisfied using the Superposition Method. The rate of convergence is found to be excellent and the results agree well with published results obtained using the Ritz method and those obtained using a Finite Element package, Abaqus. The computations show that it is possible to obtain the first 12 natural frequency parameters of the shallow shells on the rectangular planform with a rapid convergence rate