Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/147534 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Series/Report no.: 
Economic Growth Center Discussion Paper No. 1050
Publisher: 
Yale University, Economic Growth Center, New Haven, CT
Abstract: 
Does the exercise of the right of self-determination lead to inefficiency? This paper considers a set of centrally planned municipal mergers during the Meiji period, with data from Gifu prefecture. The observed merger pattern can be explained as a social optimum based on a very simple individual utility function. If individual villages had been allowed to choose their merger partners, counterfactual simulations show that the core is always non-empty, but core partitions contain about 80% more (postmerger) municipalities than the social optimum. Simulations are possible because core partitions can be calculated using repeated application of a mixed integer program.
Subjects: 
Municipal mergers
one-sided matching
moment inequalities
mixed integer programming
Gifu
JEL: 
C63
C71
H77
K33
N95
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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