This paper conducts a historical analysis of whether, after an excessive debt, the government succeeds in a fiscal adjustment, or fails in a fiscal crisis (default, debt restructuring, or high inflation). Based on Reinhart’s (2010) database, the paper identifies 63 events in which the government debt accumulates to over 60 percent of annual GDP, and their consequences are concluded as adjustment or crash.

  The crash events share 32 percent among developed countries, and 96 percent among emerging countries. Although few developed countries have faced fiscal crisis after the World War Ⅱ, 64 percent of high debt events went to a crisis in the Great Depression and the preceding periods.

  A regression model indicates that the probability of crash is around 35 percent with assuming the recent conditions surrounding developed countries differ from those before the WWⅡ. The probability rises to around 80 percent, when the current conditions are assumed not different from those previous periods.

  The failure of the expenditure tax is said to be rendered by changes in the expenditure tax act of 1957 far from Kaldor’s suggestion given upon the request of the Government of India. We explored further investigations on what initiated the changes when passing the act: First, the Kaldor’s original idea as an alternative of the super-tax, for creating progressive tax burden with less tax avoidance, reducing consumption to promote capital accumulation, raising sufficient revenues especially from non national income tax payers and the Hindu undivided families was in a sense politically abused. Strengthening and reducing the function of the alternative tax with income limits and direct taxes deduction defeated the purposes. Secondly, the concern about the characteristics of the Hindu undivided families that were involved in family business, management of ancestral property, and rituals demanded generous deductions even with the basic deduction which was set with disincentive for childbirth.

  The aim of this article is to analyze the influence of the relationship between Nordic cooperation and taxation policies. While other developed countries have adopted comprehensive income taxation since the late 1980s, Nordic countries have introduced dual income taxation in succession. Dual income taxation is regarded as a countermeasure against the trend of a decreasing tax burden that has created a “race to the bottom.” The introduction of dual income taxation was one of the reasons for high income tax revenue in Nordic countries, because it entails progressive taxation on labor income. In this article, we employ historical analysis to examine how dual income taxation was diffused in Denmark and Sweden. We show that the process of diffusion is affected by the influence of the cross-referencing between tax experts and policy makers in Nordic countries.

  The Dutch tax reform of 1990 integrated income taxes and social security contributions. The aims of this paper are to consider the background and the significance of this integration. The proposition of this integration was to unify as well the process of collecting income taxes and social security contribution as the tax base and tax rate structure. Before the reform, the tax base was too narrow and the government had to widen it. Moreover, the labor policy incentives towards part time jobs have caused the change in traditional Dutch breadwinner-model and raised discontent with the traditional model of tax and social security systems. In addition to this integration, former employers’ share of social insurance contribution became a burden of employee. The new system of ‘premium transfer allowance’ was introduced and since then employers had to pay extra money to the employees in order to compensate for the former employers’ share of social security contributions.

  We estimate the elasticities of tax revenues to a tax base (tax-elasticities) in each prefecture. The tax-elasticities are useful not only to estimate the cyclically adjusted budget balance (CAB), but also to project the future revenues. The uniformed evaluation methods are introduced by augmenting a basic CAB framework. We especially focus on the individual inhabitant tax, the corporate inhabitant tax, and the corporate enterprise tax, that cover about 60％ of the total tax revenue. Also, the tax-elasticities of primary tax revenues including the local consumption tax, whose tax-elasticity is assumed identical across prefectures, are calculated. The results show the tax-elasticities in urban areas are higher than those in other areas. The reason is urban areas largely finance their tax revenues from the corporate tax and the individual tax. Moreover, the elasticities of the corporate tax and the individual tax are higher in urban areas. These uniformed methods help comprehensive understanding of the tax components in each region.

  In globalization, the importance of ports responsible for the logistics function is increasing. Analyzing the strategic behavior among each port is valuable for designing the central policy in Japan. This paper empirically tests whether the interdependence of government spending among domestic ports exists or not. We especially focus on the four types of reference weight parameter that adjusts the degree of interdependence, which are (1) distance, (2) equal weight (3) number of vessel and (4) gross tonnage. The result shows that ports are strategically competed each other, the degree of which depends on the reference weight parameter and the historical background. This result implies that the central government should design the incentive policy toward the efficient spending in Japan, considering the reference parameter.

  This study focusing on Hokkaido municipalities attempts to verify two hypotheses as follows: 1) regional banking oligopoly raises interest rate spreads between local governments’ borrowings from regional financial institutions and the public loan programs, 2) local governments that borrow much money from the public loan programs have an advantage in borrowings from regional banks since the programs function as remedies for the oligopolistic problem. Empirical results support these two hypotheses. First, the spreads tend to narrow with an increasing number of regional banks to participate in the bidding or estimate comparisons. Second, local governments are able to reduce the spreads slightly by financing from banks other than the designated financial institution, even though money loan contracts are made in a non-competitive manner. And finally, it is confirmed that the spreads are low in local governments that are allocated more the program funds. Therefore, the public loan programs may reduce the negative effects of oligopoly by regional financial institutions.

  The Municipal Amalgamation Law in 1999 allowed amalgamated municipalities the 95％ of the amalgamation cost (e.g., construction) by issuing special purpose municipal bonds for 10 years, and the central government covered 70％ of the principal and interest repayments. Accordingly, they accumulated the special purpose debt of 4.6 trillion yen at the end of fiscal year (FY) 2011. Especially, 90％ of them issued special purpose debt annually from the year after amalgamation. This study examines the determinants of borrowing of Japanese municipalities after amalgamation. We employed a difference-in-difference regression, the results of which clearly show that the municipalities after amalgamation had accumulated special purpose municipal bonds and reduced usual municipal bonds.

  It has been argued that the Japanese local governments have lost their autonomous powers in the development of modern local public finance system.

  How has the origin of the system been formed? This paper considers this question from the perspective of fiscal coordination. More specifically, it analyzes the Gimukyouiku-Kokkofutannkinseido (the national subsidy to compulsory education) which was established in 1918 and revised in 1923. The extension of compulsory education by two years in 1908 increased the municipal expenditure that therefore increased the municipalities’ demand for the cover of costs by the National Treasury. The ‘education reform’ in 1918 and the ‘disarmament’ in 1923, however, were the critical factors that enabled the central government to bear some burdens in the compulsory education system in the form of a subsidy. The political actors involved in the establishment and the revision of the system did not intend to make use of the grants to maintain the local public finance system governed by the propertied class. Nor was the demand for equality of public services among municipalities at the cost of local autonomy observed.