Analysis of public finance issues by self-organizing maps and their further development as analytical tools : Applications of the Self-Organizing Map.

自组织映射(SOM)由T.Kohonen在20世纪80年代设计，在20世纪90年代已经广泛应用于科学的各个领域，包括工程、农业和医学。此外，它在社会科学中的应用也已经开始。本研究的主要目的是在我们之前对S在日本公共财政中的应用的研究的基础上，检验其作为分析工具的适用性和有效性。与其他分析方法相结合，SOM有助于分析重要的财政问题，如(1)预算转移过程，(2)地方政府支出效率，(3)基于人口结构的地方政府财政规划，(4)经济绩效与政治制度之间的关系。有关国际机构，高级官员会议在分析欧盟问题方面显示出其有效性，并可同样适用于其他地区组织的分析。就其实际应用而言，SOM有助于诊断系统的建设和完善。

The Self-Organizing Map(SOM), devised by T.Kohonen in the 1980s, was already broadly applied to various fields of science in the 1990s, including engineering, agriculture and, medicine. Furthermore, its application has also started in social sciences.The main purpose of this research, based on our previous studies on the SOM*s application to public finance in Japan, is to examine its applicability and effectiveness as analytical tool.Used together with other analytic methods, the SOM is useful to analyze important financial issues, such as(1) budgetary transfer processes, (2)efficiency of the expenditure of local governments, (3)financial planning of local governments based on population structure, and (4)correlation between economic performance and political systems.Concerning international institutions, the SOM reveals its effectiveness in analyzing EU issues and could be equally applied to the analysis of other regional organizations. As for its practical application, the SOM contributes to the construction and improvement of diagnosis systems.