Toward Sustainable Improvement in Quality of Life : Theoretical and Statistical Analysis on Policy Assessments

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We conducted both theoretical and empirical analyses of policy assessments focusing on actual performances of economic policies. The analytical methods are economic theory, statistics, econometrics, and experimental economics. We regularly had meetings to check the processes and the results of works in progress, and finally published outputs of the researches.We form two research groups. One is a team to study environment, traffics and policy assessment, the members of which reviewed literatures of Japan and other countries about environmental and traffic problems such as garbage, industrial wastes, air pollutions, natural environment of sightseeing spots, and public transportation facilities. This group examined what kind of analytical methods and evaluation methods are suitable for these problems. Some of them carried out field surveys and hearing about the slow life and the recycling activities in the environmental policies of Italy. In addition, other members conducted cost-benefit … More analysis on the extension plan of the Osaka monorail, which is called "Saito project," with the choice experiment method.The other group specialized in the research of local public finance and the urban policy. They collected and analyzed data of sustainable growth of economies of remote islands and information disclosure problems of local governments. In particular, they employed questionnaire surveys to those who concern tourism of Amami Oshima Island and those who suffered from the Chuetsu earthquake. Some members also studied a tendency of convergence of income per capita based on data of the metropolitan area of Japan with Markov matrices. In the experimental economic analysis, other members showed that decentralized market mechanisms may not work out for unstable equilibria of perfect competition, or any types of equilibria of monopolistic competition. In the dynamic spatial general equilibrium analysis incorporated economies of scale, other members analyzed the influence of the traffic jam in the city part of the Netherlands from an aspect of the social economy and a living standard aspect, and investigated what influene congestions have on what type of industries. Less