In recent years, voter turnout has been decreasing in most industrial countries, and about 40% of all electors abstain from voting. This may affect income inequality and the GDP growth rate through a redistribution policy determined by majority voting. In this paper, we explore the reasons for...

In analyzing economic policies, a severe problem is the time-inconsistency problem. In this regard, the choice of commitment vs. discretion engenders a tradeoff of flexibility and credibility. Therefore, it might be necessary and acceptable to adopt a discretionary policy to some degree, but...

With the data of 831 Japanese water utilities from 1999 to 2008, we used the stochastic cost frontier analysis with a true fixed-effect model in order to estimate the cost efficiency and scale economies. We found that cost inefficiency was approximately 37%. The economies of water delivery...

This study presents a two-period overlapping-generations model featuring en- dogenous growth and intergenerational conflict over fiscal policy. In particular, we characterize a Markov-perfect political equilibrium of the voting game between gen- erations, and show the following results. First,...

This paper develops a two-period overlapping-generations model featuring en- dogenous growth and intergenerational conflict over fiscal policy. In particular, the paper characterizes a Markov-perfect political equilibrium of the voting game be- tween generations, and shows the following results....

This study extends the multi-country, politico-economic model of fiscal policy developed by Song, Storesletten, and Zilibotti (2012) to incorporate wage inequality within each country. In this extended framework, we present conflict within and across generations over fiscal policy and show that...

This paper introduces an overlapping-generations model with earnings hetero- geneity and borrowing constraints. The labor income tax and the allocation of tax revenue between social security and forward intergenerational public goods are determined in a bidimensional majoritarian voting game...

We propose a new empirical approach to analyzing fiscal decentralization and apply it to Chinese intergovernmental fiscal relationships between the central government and provincial governments. In calculating budgetary revenue and expenditure shares, we include extra budgetary revenue and...

This paper develops an overlapping-generation model featuring four types of households: single female, single male, one-breadwinner couple and two-breadwinner couple. The paper considers majority voting over public pension in the presence of derived pension rights for one-breadwinner couples. In...

This paper develops an overlapping-generation model featuring four types of households: single female, single male, one-breadwinner couple and two-breadwinner couple. The paper considers majority voting over public pension in the presence of derived pension rights for one-breadwinner couples. In...