This book introduces recent developments in both theoretical and empirical analyses of local public economics. Theories of those economics as well as empirical analyses have been developed dramatically in various directions in recent years.

One direction has been to reflect real economic circumstances, especially in Japan. In the early 2000s, Japan experienced the so-called great merger (or consolidation) of municipalities in the Heisei era (1999 through the present), with the number of municipalities shrinking from 3,232 to 1,821 for increasing administrative and financial efficiency. This phenomenon is mainly due to a drastic change in demography in Japan: the dimishing birthrate and aging population. Following the consolidation, regional coordination has been undertaken to raise overall administrative and financial efficiency. In sum, various types of public policies for tackling the decreasing birthrate and aging population have been carried out. Urban sprawl and the timing of municipal mergers are dealt with from a broad point of view, and public child care services and tax competition are investigated from a policy standpoint.

Another direction has been to incorporate new ideas for forming theoretical frameworks for local public finance, most of which have been based on static situations. In the recent trend toward globalization, local governments have attended not only to the welfare of residents but also to the interests of regional economic development. In addition, decision making by local governments has tended to be affected by political activities. Thus, the endogenous growth setting and lobbying activities for the activities of local governments are discussed in the book. With these new directions for analyses, the author tackles the topics of tax competition, cross-border shopping, local provision of public goods, and soft budgets, thus covering a broad range of aspects of local public finance.

Covers broad new topics on both the theory and the empirics of local public finance Presents through empirical research the recent circumstances of public finance surrounding local governments in Japan Contains models that will interest not only public economics theorists but also empirical researchers on Japan's local public finance

Autorentext
Minoru Kunizaki, Department of Economics, Aichi University
Kazuyuki Nakamura, Faculty of Economics, University of Toyama
Kota Sugahara, Faculty of Economics, Kyoto Sangyo University

Mitsuyoshi Yanagihara, Graduate School of Economics, Nagoya University

Inhalt
1.Fiscal competition, municipal consolidation and regional coordination.- 2.Searching for soft budget constraint: An approach from the difference between the values of budget and settled account.- 3. Urban sprawl and local public service costs in Japan.- 4. Cross-border shopping in a federation system.- 5. Fiscal competition in semi-endogenous growth model.- 6. The analysis of relationship between endogenous lobbying activity and regional income inequality under fiscal.- 7. Coordinated tax reform under vertical-horizontal externality in an overlapping generations model.- 8. Inter-jurisdictional Interaction on Premium-setting: the Case of Long-term Care Insurance in Japan.- 9. Distribution of factor endowments and non-cooperative provision of public goods.- 10. Retrospective Voting in Local Government Setting.- 11. Intergovernmental transfer and delegation of power between three-tiered governments.- 12. Tax Competition in Oligopolistic Markets.- 13. Theoretical analysis for strategic provision of public child care service interaction between private and public providers.- 14. Timing of free-rider behavior in Japanese municipal merger.- 15. Local public enterprises and optimal regulation.- 16. The effect of lobbying activity on horizontal tax competition.