日本財政の地域間異時点間再分配機能*
2003 年 2003 巻 41 号 p. 41-57
詳細
2003 年 2003 巻 41 号 p. 41-57
The paper examines the alteration of the Japan's postwar functions of inter-regional redistributions through the national and local public finance system during the economic stagnation period of 1990s.
Through the high ratio of direct to indirect taxes, taxes were collected mainly from manufacturing industries and their employees of urban rapid growing sectors in terms of corporation and withholding income taxes. The collected revenue had been transferred to local governments by the local allocation tax and the national government disbursements which were distributed favorably to local governments of weak fiscal capability.
Transferring the resource between urban and rural regions through the national and local public finance system produced critical bases of the Japanese type rentseeking and made up the national-government-dependent local governments as well as the centraldependent local politics. Governors and mayors spent their main efforts to the acquisition of grants from ministries and agencies of the national government. And National Diet members of the ruling Liberal-Democratic Party who were elected mainly from rural districts assisted their efforts.
The economic stagnation during 90s and the globalization hit the export-oriented manufacturing industries, squeezed their profits, and deprived their employees of jobs and incomes. Using the YF 1999 and 2000 socio-economic data as well as those of national and local public finance, this paper estimates per capita burdens and benefits by the national and local public finance in 47-prefecture bases.
Despite of the declining tax revenue mainly from urban districts, public expenditures at both levels of governments as well as the transfers by the national governments grew high during the 1990s. Almost all prefectures accept excess benefits, and huge deficits pile up at both levels of governments.
Facing the declination of the rapid growing sectors and their rents, the interregional rent-seeking mechanism altered its function toward the intertemporal redistribution at the cost of future taxpayers who have no voting rights at present. The national and local public finance relation with huge grants is no more sustainable, and that provides another ground for the decentralization.
