This paper explored the yardstick competition among Japanese municipalities in providing medical subsidy for infants and children. In recent years, against the background of rapidly declining birthrate in Japan, municipalities aimed to reduce the medical burden of families with small children....

In this paper, the public burden for physical check-up of pregnant women is considered. This is a public expense that must be implemented by local governments independently. Public expenditure in this regard may be determined strategically by local governments to take into account the public...

Under the current fiscal conditions in many local, regional as well as the national government, the public schools face the substantial budget short falls . In order to alleviate the substantial budget shortage, it is important to raise efficiency, particularly in primary education as the costs...

This paper explores the mutual reference behavior of local governments in Japan. The Japanese public education system was decentralized in the previous decade. For example, actual fixed number of classes was relaxed in 2001 and 2003. This relaxation of regulations caused an increase in the...

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This paper examines pension premiums and a consumption tax as ways to finance basic pensions. The union wage model suggests that labor wage taxation increases the rate of unemployment. Using the right-to-manage model, it becomes clear that an increase in premiums for labor wages actually leads...

All the social insurance systems in Japan have faced number of difficulties in recent years mainly because, on the one hand both aging and number of children declining had accelerated and on the other hand Japan experienced stagnated economy after 1990. Among them the public pension system...

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