The purpose of this paper is to investigate, using micro data, the strength in Japan of the precautionary saving motive. While numerical simulations suggest the economic importance of precautionary saving, the empirical evidence is mixed. In this paper, we apply the buffer-stock saving model and...

A large proportion of public work projects in Japan are implemented on the initiative of local governments. Although local governments are independent decision makers, involvement of the central government can be justified if the behavior of the local governments generates technical...

This paper evaluates the 1999 national income tax reform in Japan by comparing the social marginal costs of public funds (SMCFs) for changing the marginal tax rates in different income brackets before the reform occurred. To do so, we estimate the discrete choice model of labor supply using a...

　　 This study explores the effects of spousal allowances (SAs) in the Japanese system of personal income taxes, using the micro-simulation method based on the discrete choice model of labor supply. Our simulations show that the complete abolishment of SAs would increase the average...

This paper evaluates the drastic reforms of Japanese public health insurance initiated in 2006. We employ a computable general equilibrium framework to numerically examine the reforms for an aging Japan in the dynamic context of overlapping generations. Our simulation produced the following...

When the labour supply is elastic with respect to the net wage, labour income taxation generates economic distortion and welfare loss. The substitute effect is a key determinant of the magnitude of such deadweight loss; thus, evaluating the elasticity of the labour supply has broad and...

When he labor supply is elastic with respect to the net wage rate, labor income taxation generates economic distortion and welfare loss. The substitute effect is a key determinant of the magnitude of such deadweight loss; thus, evaluating the elasticity of the labor supply has broad and...

This paper operationalizes Dahlby's (1998) theoretical analysis on the social marginal cost of public funds (SMCF) with microdata on Japanese prime-age males. Our exercise, however, is more than an application. First, we derive the formula for the SMCF that differentiates every individual....

In this paper, we estimate labor responses of Japanese prime-age males by taking into consideration the Japanese income tax system and utilizing a large micro-data set. We employ three maximum likelihood methods: (i) a modified version of (Hausman, 1979) and (Hausman, 1981), which assumes a...

The tax simulation studies in Japan have necessarily relied on arbitrary sets of preference parameters due to the paucity of the empirical estimates. Motivated by this state of the art, we estimate the labor supply function and preference parameters for Japanese prime-age males, allowing for the...