災害復興と経済・財政の構造問題―非常時に露呈する平時制度の不備―

抄録

　The present essay overviews challenges of Japan government and society to deal with large scale natural disasters like earthquake and flood that have been increasingly frequent in recent years. It has been addressed that such disasters reveal inadequacy of public policies in normal periods rather than generating new problems. For instance, the government lacks mechanism of determining policy priority according to cost and effectiveness, so it cannot effectively allocate budgetary resource to the recovery use. The disaster also serves a final blow to declining business, especially small ones which would have been forced to exit. Government financial support to these business after disaster could prolong them consequently undermining business dynamism. Moreover, from macro perspective, large scale natural disaster as Tokyo mega earthquake could trigger fiscal crisis given that public sector in Japan has accumulated debt more than twice of GDP. The Japan government has aimed to enhance national resilience but the present essay argues that structural reform including fiscal consolidation should be in place to make Japan truly resilient to natural disaster.