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2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
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Article type: Cover
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
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Article type: Appendix
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
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Shin'ichiro SUGIURA
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
237-264
Published: September 30, 2007
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The Long-term Care Insurance System has been operating in Japan since April 2000. The scheme is thought to be confronted with a critical situation in the near future because of a recent increase in service provisions that would press heavily upon the finances of long-term care insurance. While in principle each municipality is considered to be a separate insurer, the government also permits joint administrations of the system by several municipalities, mainly out of consideration for small-sized municipalities that often have fiscal and personnel weaknesses. From a geographical viewpoint, joint administrations of the system are important because there are inconsistent relationships between benefits and burdens among each constituent municipality of the extended insurer. In this context, benefit means the amount of service use, and burden means the premiums for Category 1 insured persons (aged 65 and over) in each municipality. Thus, this paper aims to examine the joint administrations and to analyze the imbalance of benefits and burdens among constituent municipalities of the extended insurers. The important findings were as follows: 1. Through a survey of some extended insurers, it was observed that joint administration or forming an extended insurer was considered to have important merits by many insurers. They can be summarized as: 1) increasing the efficiency of an insurer's finances, 2) facilitating business duties, for example, convening the long-term care approval board, and 3) achieving equalization of Category 1 insurance premiums among municipalities. However, the third point was notable in this paper because it was incompatible with an uneven basis for provision of long-term care services among constituent municipalities. 2. Nearly 80% of the municipalities in Japan has adopted the strategy of joint administration or forming an extended insurer, and it has been most prevalent among depopulated and aging towns and villages rather than cities. The number of extended insurers was 69, which included 523 municipalities, in 2003. In some prefectures, most municipalities participate in an extended insurer, while in others no municipalities have joined one. 3. To analyze the imbalance of benefits and burdens among constituent municipalities of an extended insurer, the author devised an original index, a ratio of individual premiums to the whole of an extended insurer's premiums. Examined on 30 extended insurers for which the data can be used, the ratios are not related to the number of constituent municipalities or the population size of Category 1 insured persons. On the other hand, some municipalities with a considerably low ratio, which means the burden of the premiums has become serious by joining an extended insurer, are remarkable among small-sized municipalities. 4. By investigation of five extended insurers for which the above ratios vary widely in each municipality, the combinations of municipalities are analyzed in order to classify them based upon the number of Category 1 insured persons. Consequently, three types of combinations were discovered as follows: 1) those with polarization, in which constituent municipalities were divided into beneficiary and heavy burden, 2) those with good stability, in which the ratios concentrated nearly at an average, and 3) those with a marked asymmetrical polarization, which has the secondary feature that the ratios of a few municipalities were considerably low or high.
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Daisuke SOTOHEBO
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
265-281
Published: September 30, 2007
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In Japan, there are some company towns whose employment depends on the small number of huge company. The purpose of this paper is to analyze change of company town, concerning about the actions of actors and the relation among actors. This study is a case study of Nobeoka city which is the company town of Asahikasei Corporation (the big chemical company). The results of the study are summarized as follows: The economic and political influence power of Asahikasei in Nobeoka City has decreased. It brought about the changes in the industrial policy. In the 1950's and the 1960's, by dispersion of Asahikasei's production bases in the rapid-growth period, it decreased the investment in Nobeoka. Because the corporatism union had a great influence on local politics in Nobeoka, the local government developed a policy which gave preferential treatment to Asahikasei. In the 1970's and the 1980's, a structural recession by the oil crisis influenced subcontractors. They demanded the anti-recession policy, and the party supported by the union followed it. Since the 1990's, the weakening of the union's support base has led the political impact to lower. The local government revalues Asahikasei whose new business promote regional industrial re-establishment. The policies for regional industries return to the industrial development which centers on Asahikasei.
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Hiroyuki YAMAGATA
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
282-297
Published: September 30, 2007
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This paper examines the location conditions and market regions of Software companies in Seattle, based on the author's survey conducted in 2002, 2003 and 2005, and presents the feature of Seattle as a software companies agglomeration area. Seattle is not top-class city in the software industry, but the headquarter of the largest software corporation, Microsoft, locates in Seattle MSA. Thus, researchers have paid attention to this area as a type of industrial district with large companies and institutions. The present survey reveals the following five points: 1) The most important location factor is personal preference of founders or CEOs, followed by the second condition, availability of technicians or engineers. However, labor cost does not play a critical role as a determinant, unlike some cases in Japanese rural cities. This may be because of the characteristics of the industry (many companies taken as samples are packaged software companies) and of the kind of business they do (most samples are developing their own software products); 2) In 1990s when many software companies started business, more diversified conditions such as availability of proximity to venture capitals' or angels' investment affected the locations of companies; 3) An analysis of market regions shows that the rate income from outside the regions differs depending upon the types of industries; 4) Approximately 80% of the areas where major customers lives (or major sales areas) are located in the United States, and California, Texas, and New York are three major states regarding this point. Other major sales area are outside the U. S., in such developed countries as Canada, Japan and the UK; and 5) Only 8 companies investigated have close relations to Microsoft in terms of location conditions and sales. The points1) to 5) above indicate that many independent software companies in addition to Microsoft, are located in Seattle MSA and they provide their own software products or services for customers who widespread in the U.S. and the whole world. This is another feature of Seattle, "software industrial district."
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2006 Okinawa Regional Congress Executive Committee
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
298-302
Published: September 30, 2007
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[in Japanese]
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
303-305
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[in Japanese]
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
306-307
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[in Japanese]
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
308-
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[in Japanese]
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
308-309
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[in Japanese]
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
309-310
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[in Japanese]
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
310-
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[in Japanese]
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
310-311
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[in Japanese]
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
311-
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[in Japanese]
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
311-312
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[in Japanese]
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
312-
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[in Japanese]
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
312-313
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[in Japanese]
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
313-
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[in Japanese]
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
313-314
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[in Japanese]
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
314-
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Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
314-315
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Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
315-
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Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
315-316
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Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
316-
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[in Japanese]
Article type: Article
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
316-317
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Article type: Appendix
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
318-319
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Article type: Appendix
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
319-
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Article type: Appendix
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
320-324
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Article type: Appendix
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
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Article type: Appendix
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
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Article type: Appendix
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
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Article type: Cover
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
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Article type: Cover
2007 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages
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