This paper proposes the social insurance contribution rule that is based on a unified framework. It also discusses a desirable direction of reform. If the rule is based on that of private insurance, the contribution should be related to benefits. When a policy purpose requires mandatory...

Using micro-level household data in the 2001 Comprehensive Survey of the Living Conditions of the People on Health and Welfare as compiled by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, this paper examines how having a household member in need of long-term nursing care can result in...

Interactions between monetary and fiscal policy depend on the specification of policy variables that fiscal policy uses. However, a general rule is that when monetary policy is capable of dealing with sticky price adjustment, a primary concern of fiscal authority should be to remedy the resource...

This paper reappraises Tachibanaki and Yokoyama (2008) -an empirical analysis that indicates no apparent backward shifting of employer social insurance contributions- by modifying their empirical strategy. First, we attempt to control for a spurious positive correlation between wages and...

This paper discusses the adequacy of the activities of the Fiscal Investment Loan Program agencies after the fundamental reform in April 2001, which disconnected postal savings and public pension reserves from the FILP. It is found that many ideas of justifying the government interventions to...

As the Japanese population structure changes, health care and long-term care costs will steadily increase. The current style of financing (pay-as-you-go) will create a large increase in future burden of these costs. This paper studies an alternative policy that prefunds the social insurance...

This paper discusses how capital income taxation affects economic growth and welfare in an endogenously growing world economy with perfect capital mobility and worldwide externalities. Worldwide ex-ternalities provide a mechanism for equalizing national growth rates even with different capital...

This paper proposes the social insurance contribution rule that is based on a unified framework. It also discusses a desirable direction of reform. If the rule is based on that of private insurance, the contribution should be related to benefits. When a policy purpose requires mandatory...