VI. Strengthening Database and Model Operations

• KANEMOTO Yoshitsugu, FF

Analysis of the costs and benefits of individual policies and policy packages to the entire population is essential to the improvement of policy design and planning capabilities. The purpose of this project is to formulate an evaluation method (toolbox) that can be readily employed by policy makers. Performance evaluation of liberalized electric power markets will be used as a primary example in developing simple simulation models that can be employed for policy evaluation and analysis. Applied general equilibrium models are currently being used for policy evaluation in such areas as energy policy. However, these are large-scale models and evaluation of their reliability tends to be difficult.

The objective of this project is to estimate the costs and benefits of various policy options using microeconomic models that are small enough to be formulated and interpreted by policy makers.

• ICHIMURA Hidehiko, FF

As in the case of macrodata based analysis, there are two major approaches to policy effect measurement based on microdata. One is the structural approach based on micro models, and the other is the reduced form approach.

The advantage of the reduced form approach is that it does not require a complex model. Consequently, it generates more reliable and robust results. For this reason, the reduced form approach is considered to be an effective method for ex-post policy evaluation. However, this approach also has disadvantages. While the reduced form approach may determine that a certain policy is effective in a given region and at a given time, it has nothing to say on whether the same effect can be obtained when the same policy is implemented in another region or at another time. This is because the reduced form approach does not stipulate the mechanisms through which the policy effect is generated. In light of the advantages and disadvantages of the reduced form approach, it is important to employ both approaches in tandem.

This project will show how the general reduced form approach widely used in the United States and Europe can be utilized. In addition, methods will be developed to compensate for the disadvantages of the reduced form approach.

• Office of Quantitative Analysis and Databases

In recent years, attention has increasingly focused on the role of non-profit organizations (NPO) in Japan. However, the statistical data needed to estimate their economic scale, industrial structure, and so forth is extremely scarce.

This project will conduct a questionnaire survey of non-profit corporations, collect and compile basic data on their activities, and estimate the overall scale of NPO activity in Japan. In addition, it will build a database to serve as a platform for NPO information that can be used in other research projects.

• Office of Quantitative Analysis and Databases

In recent years, economic analyses using panel data, which longitudinally connect data on the individual, household, establishment, or firm level, have been drawing much attention in the United States and Europe. Meanwhile, in Japan, statistical data collected and compiled by the government's statistics bureaus and divisions are mostly cross sectional data and therefore require substantial time and effort for researchers to convert data from government statistics to panel data. This project will work intensively on compilation of micro-data - a task that has most often been left to individual researchers - and the development of various types of databases mainly for statistical research on companies and business establishments.

More specifically, it will focus on the development of panel data sets that longitudinally link frequently-used micro data of the "Basic Survey of Japanese Business Structure and Activities," the "Basic Survey of Overseas Business Activities," the "Census of Manufactures," and the "Census of Commerce." In addition, we will offer researchers inside and outside RIETI the converting tables to replicate the panel data. The project will also summarize the methods by which the databases were developed and provide an overview of the data sets used.

• KAINOU Kazunari, F

The Kyoto Protocol Action Plan formulated under the Law Concerning Countermeasures to Global Climate Change mandates local governments to formulate and to implement countermeasures to global climate change issues. However, regional energy and environmental statistics concerning domestic supply and demand for energy and compatible with volume of energy-origin carbon dioxide emissions do not exist. Consequently, local governments lack basic indices for policy formulation.

The purpose of this project is to apply the methodology used in the compilation of countrywide "general energy statistics" to compute regional supply and demand for energy, and those energy-origin carbon dioxide emissions that are compatible with the "general energy statistics." Furthermore, the project will develop analysis and evaluation indices to assist local governments in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of measures for energy conservation and reduction of energy-origin carbon dioxide emissions.