Crucial Decisions By Small Towns and Villages: Why Did Some Municipalities Choose to Merge But Others Did Not During the Nationwide Wave of Municipal Mergers in Japan?

Kyohei Yamada

International Journal of Public Administration, 2016, vol. 39, issue 6, 480-491

Abstract: This article focuses on the nationwide wave of municipal consolidations in Japan that took place from 2003 to 2006 and examines why some municipalities merged but others did not. The central government did not legally force consolidations but instead provided municipalities with fiscal incentives. I argue that small municipalities were reluctant to merge because they would lose generous transfers from the central government as well as decision-making powers once they unified with their larger neighbors. Fiscal incentives by the central government significantly raised the cost of remaining intact and induced a large number of fiscally weak municipalities to merge.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01900692.2015.1028632 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:lpadxx:v:39:y:2016:i:6:p:480-491

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/lpad20

DOI: 10.1080/01900692.2015.1028632

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Public Administration is currently edited by Ali Farazmand

More articles in International Journal of Public Administration from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().