| 1. |
宮崎 毅, “Municipal Consolidation, Cost Reduction, and Economies of Scale: Evidence from Japan”, Discussion Paper Series, No 2013-8, Faculty of Economics, Kyushu University, 2013.10, According to the literature, one of the advantages of local government consolidation is the delivery of efficient and effective public services through economies of scale. However, empirical works provide mixed evidence on whether consolidation leads to cost reduction. This study explores the cost-reduction effects of local government consolidation using Japanese municipality data. Specifically, it considers a number of consolidation cases and distinguishes between the effects of economies of scale and other consolidation-related factors such as fiscal incentives to correctly evaluate the cost influence of consolidation. The study uses an instrumental variable methodology to deal with the endogeneity problem regarding
consolidation decisions. The findings of this study are twofold. First, consolidation increases costs, and economies of scale do not lead to cost reduction. Second, municipal expenditure rises immediately after consolidation but gradually declines over time, though not through economies of scale.. |
| 2. |
宮崎 毅, “Internalization of Externalities and Local Government Consolidation: Empirical Evidence from Japan”, Discussion Paper Series, No 2013-7, Faculty of Economics, Kyushu University, 2013.10, The fact that consolidation overcomes externality problems in the provision of local public goods is one of the best-known benefits of consolidation presented in the theoretical literature. Nevertheless, previous studies provide little evidence of how public service spillovers affect boundary reform decisions. This study empirically tests the hypothesis that spillovers induce
consolidation, by estimating the amount of spillovers from the demand function for public goods. Specifically, it uses voting data on local referenda in order to examine the relationship between consolidation preference and spillovers through identifying the preferences of individual jurisdictions. It is shown that municipalities that have suffered from large public good
spillover effects prefer consolidation. Moreover, consistent with the findings in the theoretical and empirical literature, economies of scale, population size, differences in median income, and unconditional grants are found to influence the consolidation decision.. |
| 3. |
宮崎 毅, “Municipal Consolidation and Local Government Behavior: Evidence from Japanese Voting Data on Merger Referenda”, Discussion Paper Series A, No.588, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, 2013.05, The empirical literature investigating the role of key features of local governments regarding decisions on consolidation tends to use a dummy that takes 1 if adjacent local governments decide to merge. Under the estimation method, it is difficult to identify which governments have no incentive to merge. The current study presents an empirical test of decision on consolidation using voting data from Japanese local referenda that distinctively identify the preferences of specific individual municipalities. I find evidence that municipalities that could enjoy large economies of scale from a merger
prefer consolidation, and large and small municipalities are likely to merge.. |
