Research Project (Ongoing)

Research on the applicability of Japan’s infrastructure development experience to developing countries

This study aims to analyze the economic and social impacts of Japan's infrastructure development at the national and regional levels in Japan using econometric methods, as well as to review the contours and impacts of related development and fiscal policies, and to extract suggestions for sustainable infrastructure development in developing countries.

The background is that today's developing countries face a narrowing of fiscal space for infrastructure investment due to fiscal mobilization associated with responses to new coronavirus infections and other factors, as well as the impact of the debt crisis in some countries. To allocate limited public resources efficiently, it is necessary to focus on differences in infrastructure effectiveness across stages of development, regions, and sectors. Although the development paths of today's developing countries are diverse, the Japanese experience described above can serve as a reference for central and local governments in developing countries as they pursue infrastructure development.

In the analysis of the impact of infrastructure, the impact is estimated quantitatively according to the differences in the type of infrastructure (e.g., production infrastructure such as transportation and communication, social infrastructure such as education and sanitation), region (metropolitan/non-metropolitan), and project entity (national/local government). For the analysis of production effects (impact on GDP), a meta-analysis of previous empirical analyses will be conducted. For the analysis of welfare effects, we will use the Japanese government's infrastructure stock statistics and newly constructed prefectural panel data of the Human Development Index to estimate the impact on living standards that cannot be expressed in terms of production effects.