Competition for private capital and central grants: the case of Japanese industrial parks

Local governments invest in public infrastructure to develop their regions. When they depend on intergovernmental grants for local development and have opportunities to lobby upper-level governments for such grants, horizontal intergovernmental competition in lobbying activity may emerge in addition to competition over public infrastructure. This paper empirically examines the existence of these interactions between Japanese localities, by using data on the value of industrial parks as infrastructure provisions and on personnel interchanges between the central and local governments as a measure of lobbying activity. Our results suggest that a Japanese local government’s choice of the size of industrial parks and its invitation to central officers to act as a director on loan are positive responses to the neighboring local government’s policy choices. As the value of the industrial parks in a district is affected by the neighboring districts’ lobby activities and their industrial park values, we can interpret these results as evidence of inter-regional competition in these two dimensions, rather than control by the central government in this unitary state.     

Labor supply response and preferences specification: Estimates for prime-age males in Japan

In this paper, we estimate labor responses of Japanese prime-age males by taking into consideration the Japanese income tax system and utilizing a large micro-data set. We employ three maximum likelihood methods: (i) a modified version of [Hausman, 1979] and [Hausman, 1981] , which assumes a linear labor supply function; (ii) that given by Zabalza (1983), which assumes CES preferences; and (iii) that given by Van Soest (1995), which employs the translog utility function and assumes discrete labor hour choice. While the estimates based on the Hausman and Zabalza methods fare poorly, those based on the Van Soest method result in more plausible labor responses. However, these responses are larger than those of the North American and European counterparts.     

Fiscal restraints by advisors

This study investigates the role of fiscal advisors in maintaining government fiscal discipline when the advisor’s appointment is determined endogenously. Our theoretical model shows that an incumbent politician has an incentive to employ an external advisor as a commitment device for fiscal discipline before being aware of his own competence level. The advisor acts as a restraint on public expenditure, which works to control the incumbent politician’s ex post overspending to buy votes. Our empirical analysis supports this hypothesis in the Japanese case where governments with directors from the central government tend to spend less.     

Economic studies of taxation in Japan: The case of personal income taxes

We argue that tax policy in Japan is on a shaky empirical ground. First, until recently, no serious attempts had been made to estimate labour responses to taxation, especially with respect to prime-age male workers. Second, while there is some stock of empirical analysis on labour supply response of female workers, few studies have appropriately allowed for the budget constraint structure implied by the tax system. Third, as a corollary, there is not a reliable stock of empirical estimates to quantify the frequently employed concepts of “disincentives to work” or “distortion.” Given this state of the literature, we introduce our estimates, and calculate the degree of distortion using the concept of the marginal cost of public funds.     

Unemployment risk and buffer-stock saving: An empirical investigation in Japan

The purpose of this paper is to investigate, using micro data, the strength in Japan of the precautionary saving motive. While numerical simulations suggest the economic importance of precautionary saving, the empirical evidence is mixed. In this paper, we apply the buffer-stock saving model and focus on the effect of unemployment risk on wealth accumulation. We find that uncertainty has a positive and statistically significant effect on the wealth-to-income ratio, and that buffer-stock savings account for 6 or 15 percent of net financial assets. Housing loans and expenditures associated with children decrease this ratio.     

Health insurance reform and economic growth: Simulation analysis in Japan

This paper evaluates the drastic reforms of Japanese public health insurance initiated in 2006. We employ a computable general equilibrium framework to numerically examine the reforms for an aging Japan in the dynamic context of overlapping generations. Our simulation produced the following results: first, an increase in the co-payment rate, a prominent feature of the 2006 reform, would promote economic growth and welfare by encouraging private saving. Second, the ex-post moral hazard behavior following the increase in co-payment rates, however, reduces economic growth. Third, Japan's trend of increasing the future public health insurance benefits can mainly be explained by its aging population, and increasing the co-payment rate does little to reduce future payments of public health insurance benefits. Fourth, the effect on future economic burdens of reducing medical costs through efficiencies in public health insurance, emphasis on preventive medical care, or technological progress in the medical field is small. Finally, a policy of maintaining public health insurance at a fixed percentage of GDP will require reducing public health insurance benefits, perhaps up to 45% by 2050. Such a policy also reduces economic growth until approximately 2035. Our simulation indicates that the reform does not significantly reduce future public health insurance benefits, but it can enhance economic growth and welfare by encouraging private saving.