We investigate how preference heterogeneity affects contribution behavior in a public goods game. We measure individual preferences using the ring measure of social value orientation which enables us to classify people as altruistic, cooperative, individualistic, competitive, and aggressive. In our study, subjects are classified into individualists who maximize own outcomes or cooperators who act in the best interest of both themselves and the others. We clarify the difference in contribution behavior between both types of subjects in a simple experimental design. We use a two-person public goods game with a perfect stranger matching schemes in which subjects meet the partner only once. Moreover, we elicit subjects'beliefs about the partner's contribution for further understanding of contribution behavior.

We find that the average contribution (belief) over all 19 periods of cooperators is significantly higher than that of individualists, but the difference between average contribution (belief) of cooperators and that of individualists in each period decline over time. We also show that both types of subjects are conditional cooperators whose contributions are significantly positively correlated with beliefs which are adaptively formed on the basis of the lagged amount of contribution of the partner. However, cooperators contribute more to the public goods than individualists if the levels of belief are equal.

There have been many researches relating to the merger of municipalities especially since 2000 in Japan. Many of them estimate the administrative costs mainly with population and area. But they little consider each individual contribution of these factors, for they focus on the effects of the merger. This paper intends to make sure the ratio of population or area to the change of revenues in the merger-experienced municipalities comparing with the non-experienced municipalities. As the result, we can see that the scale of revenues of the merger-experienced municipalities is larger than that of the non-experienced municipalities even if both of them could have the same population and area; but the revenues of the non-experienced municipalities would exceed under a certain size of area, which differs by the scale of municipalities; the ratio of area is relatively higher in the small and medium sized municipalities, though the influences of population to the revenues are generally prevailing in many municipalities; the revenues would more decline in the larger sized municipalities as the population reduces.

The decentralization could be considered as one of the risky policies for the ruling party in Japan because the voters have little interests in it and the many pressure groups are against it. But the DPJ (The Democratic Party of Japan) central government (2009-2012) decided to promote decentralization. How can we explain the decision making process? Using the behavioral economic theory "Prospect Theory" that describes how people make decisions under conditions of uncertainty, this articles shows that, as the support for the DPJ central government was getting worse and worse, the ruling party turned to be the risk-loving player who is willing to take more risks in order to earn higher returns and then decided to decentralize the central government's authorities.

Voter turnout is falling in democracies around the world. The decline is particularly serious in local elections in metropolitan areas. In this paper, I analyze the participation of young voters in two Tokyo suburban cities. In Koganei City mayoral elections were held twice in 2011 because of a controversy about garbage disposal. In Kodaira City a referendum was held on the planned construction of a road. Analysis of Koganei mayoral elections using a mail survey indicates that younger voters were more likely than older voters to consider the garbage problem when deciding whether to go to vote. Aggregate data on the Kodaira referendum shows that the turnout of younger voters was higher than the norm for local elections in that city. In neither of these two elections did overall turnout rise but my analyses demonstrate that younger voters will participate more actively in local elections if they have an opportunity to vote on a controversial issue.

This study considers the factors behind municipality amalgamation in Japan from fiscal year 1999 to 2005 by using survival analysis. I use a discrete-time logistic model and a 21, 165 person-year dataset. My findings show that the central government's carrot-and-stick policy strongly influenced municipality amalgamation for those with high ratios of inter-governmental grants to total revenue. Moreover, the effect of the fiscal conditions of municipalities on the timing of crating amalgamation committee and amalgamation are different.

The municipal mergers called "Heisei-no-Daigappei" decreased the number of municipalities in Japan. It increased the variance of the population and area between municipalities. So, this paper discusses the functions according to the population size of municipalities.

This paper examines the effects on expenditure of municipal mergers that took place in Japan between 1998 and 2010. We evaluated the effect of municipal mergers by comparing the changes in total expenditure between the merger group and the non-merger group in 2011. Our results indicate that municipal mergers did not lead to lower total expenditure. In addition to comparing the changes in total expenditure, we also compared the changes in most spending categories. We find that personnel expenses were higher in the merged municipalities according as the number of incorporated municipalities increases. Furthermore, according to our results the mergers tended to lead to growth in commerce and industry expenses and reduction in agriculture, forestry and fishery expenses.