| 2025.01.23 (THU) 14:40-17:50 |
| 14:40-16:10 |
 | We study school consolidation decisions and examine how the decisions are inefficient. First, we estimate willingness to accept (WTA) a school consolidation of the current school and an adjacent school and the determinants of WTA using an original survey. Then we examine the impact of actual school consolidations on the expenditure of municipalities to estimate the amount that the prefecture and municipality can save from such school consolidations. We find that much of the savings are due to class reductions, and about half the savings are at the prefectural level rather than the municipal level. The estimated WTA of and saving from school consolidations suggest a particular mechanism where the closure of schools could be delayed by inefficient decision-making due to the presence of fiscal externalities. |
| 16:20-17:50 | Creative Destruction in the European State System: 1000-1850 (joint work with David Schönholzer) 東京大学 Eric Weese 氏 |
 | Using newly available data on the universe of boundary changes for all European states over 1000-1850, we study the effect of switching between states on long-run urban growth. In event studies around the timing of switches, we find that cities suffer large transitory losses in population but enjoy sustained population increases under new governance. Switching during wartime is associated with higher immediate costs but faster recoveries than those during peacetime. We then use decomposition techniques to show that improvements in state quality occur both due to improvements in the pool of states over time as well as due to cities gravitating towards higher quality states. We provide suggestive evidence that parliamentary activity, fiscal capacity, and protection from predation mediate these effects. We interpret these findings as evidence for the short-term costs and long-term benefits of territorial competition – a process of creative destruction in the development and consolidation of state capacity. |
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