Does Broader-Based Local Government affect Expenditure on Public Long-Term Care Insurance? The Case of Japan

This paper considers the possible effects of broader-based local government, especially extended associations, in Japanese local public finance. We mainly analyze scale effects in public long-term care insurance expenditure, with our results indicating a U shaped expenditure structure. We also show that expenditures associated with extended associations decrease more rapidly than ordinary municipal expenditures. These findings suggest that expenditure of appropriate population size extended associations larger than single municipality.local public finance, scale effects, broader-based local government, extended association, long-term care insurance

Valuing Medical Schools in Japan: National versus Private Universities

Medical school usually has the highest tuition fees among the university departments. The reason why students pay such expensive fees is that they estimate that their earnings will greatly increase after graduation. We construct a model about student behavior on entering college and estimate the value-added of medical schools using college data from Japan. Our results show that a school with a long tradition of providing high quality education is evaluated as rendering high value-added to students. Those empirical results enable us to simulate the effects of the privatization of a public university. This simulation indicates that there is no difference between public and private schools when the tuition fees of the public university become as high as those of the private university.Value-added of University, Medical school tuition fee, Public and private schools, Privatization

Valuing Medical Schools in Japan : National versus Private Universities

Medical school usually has the highest tuition fees among the university departments. The reason why students pay such expensive fees is that they estimate that their earnings will greatly increase after graduation. We construct a model about student behavior on entering college and estimate the value-added of medical schools using college data from Japan. Our results show that a school with a long tradition of providing high quality education is evaluated as rendering high value-added to students. Those empirical results enable us to simulate the effects of the privatization of a public university. This simulation indicates that there is no difference between public and private schools when the tuition fees of the public university become as high as those o

Public investment and the fiscal common pool problem on municipal mergers in Japan

The purpose of this paper is to reveal which kinds of public investment cause municipal mergers to create a fiscal common pool problem in Japan. In particular, we focus on whether municipal mergers increase road and public park construction just before the mergers or not because previous papers reveal only that municipal mergers increase local bonds. The empirical results reveal that the subordinate merger partners rapidly increase their road and public park expenses just before mergers

平成の大合併と歳出削減‐類似団体別市町村財政指数表を用いた実証分析‐

The number of municipalities in Japan has decreased from 3,232 in 1999 to 1,820 in 2006 because of municipal mergers, called Heisei-no-Daigappei. This paper estimates the effects of municipal mergers in Japan’s local public expenditure. In order to evaluate the expenditure of municipal mergers, our new approach is to apply unique index called financial index classified by similar types. We mainly results the scale effect using panel data on Japanese municipalities and found that municipalities achieved reductions in their total expenditures with mergers. In addition, the expenditure structure is also found to be an inverse U shaped

Public investment and the fiscal common pool problem on municipal mergers in Japan

The purpose of this paper is to reveal which kinds of public investment cause municipal mergers to create a fiscal common pool problem in Japan. In particular, we focus on whether municipal mergers increase road and public park construction just before the mergers or not because previous papers reveal only that municipal mergers increase local bonds. The empirical results reveal that the subordinate merger partners rapidly increase their road and public park expenses just before mergers

地方財政健全化指標における相互依存関係の実証分析

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate an effect of new fiscal rules in the Japanese prefectural government. Especially, we focus on creative accounting [von Hagen and Wolff (2006)] in the Law Relating to the Financial Soundness of Local Governments (2007, Law No. 94). We estimated the effect of fiscal rules by using SUR model. Our results show that the new rules may have induced local governments to use stock-flow adjustments. The Japanese prefectural government increased future burden ratio introducing new rules while they decreased their deficit