地理的特性を考慮した市町村行政コスト効率性の計測

抄録

In Japan, financial balances in rural areas are being adversely affected because public incomes are decreasing due to the decrease in the youth population, while administrative expenditures for older people are increasing. In order to decrease the per capita cost, we recommend that local governments should be consolidated to enable the sharing of the fixed cost involved in labor and facilities for public services. Previous studies regarding consolidation suggest an “optimal population size” corresponding to the lowest per capita cost. However, the influence of socio-demographic and geographic features, such as the average distance between an administrative office and inhabitants, road network, and land altitudes representing the elevation of an area have been ignored to date while planning consolidations. This study aims to estimate the influence of socio-demographic and geographic features on the administrative expenditure by the stochastic frontier model. Since the per capita cost significantly varies between cities and other places (towns and villages), we analyzed two models: one for each type of government. Our results revealed that these features significantly influence the expenditure. Therefore, while planning consolidations, the location of the administrative office should be carefully selected in order to minimize the average distance from inhabitants; further an adequate road network is essential.