アメリカにおけるディレギュレーションの進行は，日本における政府規制産業と制度について，深甚な影響を与えつつある．しかし日米では，公約供給（public supply）のあり方に組織上大きな相違が存在している．特に日本のシステムにおける官僚性の存在は，アメリカと対比して独自の問題を提起するものである．このような構造上の差異に着目しつつ，の変革の可能性を分析するのが本稿の目的である．

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　「企業」と名の付く

は,公共性(公共の福祉の増進)と経済性(企業性の発揮)の両面が求められている組織体である。そのの中で地方公共団体の内部組織である地方公営企業は,企業会計と同等の地方公営企業会計を採用し,公共性と経済性の衝突が強く生じる組織体である。近年では経営悪化に伴い,地方公共団体の他会計からの多くの繰出金の拠出の発生や民営化などによる経営形態の移行などの問題に直面している。

　多くの

においては,社会的説明責任を果たすために,公認会計士または監査法人による外部監査が法定または任意で実施されているが,地方公営企業においては,その経済性を測定する情報の信頼性を確かめる公認会計士または監査法人による外部監査は実施されていない。

　そこで本稿では,地方公営企業における外部監査の導入を念頭に置き,外部監査がすでに実施されている

における外部監査の実施状況を整理し,その整理からにおける外部監査の課題を抽出している。その課題には,における外部監査は保証業務であるか否か,また,監査証明業務であるか否かについてまず検討している。この検討から,における外部監査の目的を明らかにするとともに,地方公営企業における外部監査のあり方,すなわち地方公営企業を取り巻く限られた想定利用者である地方公共団体の長,議会,そしてその背後の市民や住民による監督等の機能の一環としての監査類似業務である外部監査(限定した想定利用者に対する説明責任のための外部監査,ガバナンス体制の強化のための外部監査)と位置づけている。さらに,社会福祉法人における公認会計士または監査法人による外部監査と所轄庁による指導監督との連携事例をもとに,現行の地方公営企業における監査委員監査や外部監査契約に基づく監査と連携する外部監査の活用について提起をしている。

　

における公認会計士または監査法人による外部監査は,これまであまり研究対象とされてこなかった。このにおける監査研究の中心は,会計検査院の検査,監査委員監査および外部監査契約に基づく監査(包括外部監査・個別外部監査)の研究が主であった。本稿の検討は,さらには非営利組織体やパブリックセクター全般にわたる監査論研究の一助となることを目指している。

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The water supply industry is owned and managed directly by the local governments in Japan. The water administrators undertake the day-to-day management of the water supply but can not make decisions on fundamental policy issues. These must be made by the head of the local government through the local assembly. So the raising of water rates can not avoid political intervention. The revision of water rates usually follows a course from a deliberative council to the head of the local government to the municipal assembly.
The deliberative council usually consists of ordinary consumers, representatives from labor unions, and men of learning and experience. Members must start their deliberations on the basis of worsening water supply finances, but usually only representatives of labor unions develop ideological opposition. Sometimes they even support increasing public expenditures because of their ignorance of the self-paying principals in water supply industry management.
In the municipal assembly, leftists from the socialist and communist parties typically offer severe opposition to the raising of water rates based on their ideological point of view, too, and sometimes despite their knowledge of the difficult situation in the water supply industry. The political relationship between the head and the members of the municipal assembly is paramount. If the head is a conservative and the majority of the assembly are reformists, bills to raise the water rates will be very difficult to pass. In such cases the proposed increases are often reduced and implementation is delayed, though an overall rise in rates is not ruled out. Of course it can not be enforced when local elections are near because raising the water rates is never favorable for candidates.
There are many other political considerations as well. The increases must usually be under thirty per cent to pass the assembly without much difficulty. The rates are usually set up on a sliding scale, with the largest users paying the most, but the basic charge is kept low, even though most revenues come from domestic and small-industry sources and because the politicians need their votes. For those who use extremely small amounts, the raises are minimal. For public bathhouses, the raises are also small, though they use a large volume of water, because of public health considerations.
In the case of a city in the Kansai District, the consumption tax was included in the water rates when it started in 1989 because the mayor was a conservative and a member of the Tax Commission, but immediately after another mayor, a reformist, was elected the consumption tax was excluded from the water rates and was payed as a part of public expenditures.
The process of revising the water rates abounds with political considerations which interfere with smooth increases. This must be the destiny of the water supply industry as a public utility and a local government enterprise.

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Public firms have shown trends toward privatization since the 1980s. Many privatized firms often exit the market in rural areas because of low profitability. Nevertheless, no theoretical studies on privatization have paid attention to problems caused by the exit of privatized firms. Therefore, in view of exit problems, this paper investigates the effects of privatization on consumer surplus, producer surplus and social welfare in a two region model with different scales of markets.
We assume that a public firm and private firms supply goods under a Cournot-Nash competition in region A with a large-scale of market and the public firm monopolistically supplies goods in region B with a small-scale of market. Under this setting, this paper considers the possibility for exit from the smaller market after privatization of the public firm. Therefore, we consider three cases: (i) “a mixed-oligopoly and monopoly” where the public firm is not privatized, (ii) “privatization and monopoly” that chooses privatization and continues to supply goods to both regions, and (iii) “privatization and exit” that chooses privatization and exits from the smaller market. We examine the effects of privatization by comparing the above three equilibria.
The results obtained are as follows. First, consumer surplus is the largest in “a mixed-oligopoly and monopoly” case. Second, from the viewpoint of producer surplus, privatization is always preferable and does not depend on whether a privatized firm exits. Third, the effects of privatization on social welfare depend not only on the scales of the markets of the two regions but also on whether the level of the fixed costs is large. That is, if the market size in region B is sufficiently small or the fixed costs are sufficiently expensive, privatization is desirable from the viewpoint of social welfare. This result implies that the public firm should be privatized under conditions of underpopulation in rural areas or for industries with heavy fixed costs.

JEL Classification: H1, H20, L33

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Private firms and a public firm sometimes form an oligopoly market, and compete one another. Especially on the European Continent, we can find many cases even now after the trend of the privatization, and we Japanese also have private banks and public post office in financial market. The so-called “mixed oligopoly (MO) ” have aimed at the revivals and progresses of some industries (firms) or the securance of employments depending on ample funds of the state, but after Merrill and Schneider (1966), some examine its validity as means of market intervention instead of the regulation on private firms or the public monopoly; and there the difference of their action principles, not the funds of the public firm, became an important matter.
In this paper, after pointing out the validity of MO in use of the simple Cournot model, we examine whether the validity is preserved when production efficiencies are different between the two types of firms, and when the number of the private firm increases form 1 to n-1. Also, we focus on the profit (constraint), which is often neglected in such studies, and extend to examine whether Din the former case, the existence of the public firm is preferable as far as it earns non-negative profit, (2) in the latter case, given that at certain numbers of firms, MO deteriorates so-cial welfare, how the numbers are determined.
As a result, we prove that in such cases, the varidity of MO depends on demand, cost and the number of firms, and in relation to (1), non-negative profit of the public firm does not necessary indicate it.

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