The role of Japanese local governments in stabilisation policy

Local governments in Japan account for about 80 per cent of general government spending when excluding social security expenditures. Therefore, for the implementation of fiscal policy it is important how local governments will behave. On the basis of the economic theories on fiscal federalism it is generally rational for local government entities, especially smaller ones, not to participate in the stabilisation policy of the central government and to take a free rider position. Such a behaviour would imply a substantial reduction or even an offsetting of the effects of a stabilisation policy of the central government. As for empirical evidence, a procyclical behaviour of local entities was observed in several countries, among them Germany. We show that in Japan this was not the case and that so far local governments do participate in the stabilisation efforts of the central government. In a second step we show the institutional arrangements that have enabled the central government to influence the fiscal behaviour of the local governments accordingly. Will recent regulatory changes and the enourmous debt level have a significant impact? We argue that although from April 2000 some legal changes in the direction of decentralisation were enforced, many influence mechanisms remained intact and thus the changes weaken the established system, but did not break it up altogether. --local government borrowing,intergovernmental fiscal relations,Japan,federalism,fiscal equalisation,fiscal policy,government debt,local allocation tax,local autonomy,public finance,stabilisation policy

Thermodynamics of the Casimir effect

A complete thermodynamic treatment of the Casimir effect is presented. Explicit expressions for the free and the internal energy, the entropy and the pressure are discussed. As an example we consider the Casimir effect with different temperatures between the plates ($T$) resp. outside of them ($T'$). For $T'<T$ the pressure of heat radiation can eventually compensate the Casimir force and the total pressure can vanish. We consider both an isothermal and an adiabatic treatment of the interior region. The equilibrium point (vanishing pressure) turns out instable in the isothermal case. In the adiabatic situation we have both an instable and a stable equilibrium point, if $T'/T$ is sufficiently small. Quantitative aspects are briefly discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 3 EPS-figure

On the Structure of the Virtual Compton Amplitude in the Generalized Bjorken Region: Integral Relations

A systematic study is performed of the structure of the twist-2 contributions to the virtual Compton amplitude in deep-inelastic non-forward scattering for general spin states in the non-local light cone expansion. The gauge invariance is proven in this approach for the twist-2 contributions for non-forward scattering. Relations are derived between the contributing non-forward amplitudes.Comment: 23 pages LATEX, 1 style file, slightly extended versio

Evolution Kernels for Light-Ray Operators: Twist 2 and Twist 3 Contributions

The general evolution kernels of the twist 2 light-ray operators for unpolarized and polarized deep inelastic scattering are calculated in ${\cal O}(\alpha_s)$. From these evolution kernels a series of special evolution equations can be derived, among them the Altarelli-Parisi equations and the evolution equation for the meson wave function. In the case of twist 3 the results of Balitzki and Braun are confirmed.Comment: 5 pages latex, to appear in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Deep Inelastic Scattering, Chicago, April 1997, AI

Local government finance in Japan : Can irresponsible borrowing be avoided?

Rapidly rising local government debt in Japan presents a nontrivial addition to the central government debt. The planned replacement of the approval system for local government bor- rowing by a `consultation system´ in FY 2006 does not remove the implicit central govern- ment guarantee for local debt and thus the moral hazard involved in the system. Given all the risks associated with high debt levels (crowding out, inflation, potential insustainability) and the bad selection of projects financed under the current system, we suggest to restrict local government borrowing to user based revenue bonds, where investors receive the future revenue of the project and have an incentive to carefully select and monitor the projects they finance. In a generation model we show that this not only improves the sustainability of local government debt, but that it is highly likely that the debt will be sustainable. --Government debt,sustainability,local government borrowing,local finance,Japan,generation model,government bonds,user based revenue bonds

Polarized Deep Inelastic Diffractive Scattering near the Light Cone

Polarized inclusive deep-inelastic scattering is formulated in the light cone expansion. The QCD evolution of the leading twist distribution functions is derived. It is shown that the twist--2 contribution to the structure functions g_2^{D(3)} is obtained via g_1^{D(3)} by a Wandzura--Wilczek relation.Comment: 4 pages LATEX, 2 subsidiary files, contribution to QCD-N'02, Ferrara and DIS 2002, Craco

Leading Twist Amplitudes for Exclusive Neutrino Interactions in the Deeply Virtual Limit

Neutrino scattering on nucleons in the regime of deeply virtual kinematics is studied both in the charged and the neutral electroweak sectors using a formalism developed by Blumlein, Robaschik, Geyer and Collaborators for the analysis of the Virtual Compton amplitude in the generalized Bjorken region. We discuss the structure of the leading twist amplitudes of the process.Comment: 14 pages, 1 fig revised final version to appear in Phys. Rev.