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.