Professor Takero Doi
Specialty: Public Finance, Public Economics
Political Economy(Interviewer: 迫本・小野)『My current research focus is on the taxation system, specifically the consumption tax! 』
What is your research specialty?
I am currently researching corporate tax. I am also planning to research consumption tax again in
the future. With the recent national policy trend of integrated reform of the social security andtaxation systems, the taxation system must also be changed in accordance with the changes in thesocial structure of our country. In particular, the government has decided to increase theconsumption tax under the integrated reform of social security and taxation, and the consumption
tax will rise to 8% this year. At the same time, there is talk of cutting corporate taxes.
Economics does not believe that corporate taxes are borne by a monster called a "corporation"and that consumers and others are exempt from any burden. Those who are not familiar with theeconomics of the world may have the impression that consumers do not bear the burden of
corporate taxes, and that someone called a “corporation” bears the burden. However, this is nottrue at all. In the end, corporate tax is a tax on the profits made by a company. If there had been
no corporate tax, perhaps the employees would have received a larger salary. Shareholders might
have received more dividends. The products sold to consumers could have been sold at a lower
price. However, because of the corporate tax burden, the company has to pay money to thegovernment for that amount, so the stakeholders surrounding the company are implicitly
burdened in such a way that they say, "Sorry, but we can't raise salaries for that amount," "We
can't increase dividends," or "We will raise prices for consumers”. In this way, the stakeholders
surrounding the company are implicitly forced to bear the burden. This is how economics sees it.
So what proportion of the burden is borne by employees and shareholders? There are various
analyses, but there are still some unresolved issues. We are analyzing what the impact would bewith all the talk of lowering corporate taxes. To add one more point, the consumption tax will beincreased, while the corporate tax will be reduced. This may seem like a cold treatment ofconsumers or a preferential treatment of corporations, but I am logically convinced that
economics can make it clear that this is not the case.
In the future, when the consumption tax is raised, we would like to add a new analysis of how
the tax is applied at the distribution stage. For example, recently there has been a lot of talk thatwhen the consumption tax is increased, small and medium-sized micro businesses will be forced
to lower their prices by their prime contractors and will not be able to pass on the burden. Thegovernment is supporting them by saying that they will be able to pass on the burden, but are
they really unable to pass on the burden, or to what extent are they passing it on? To take it to theextreme, what is now 100 yen is now 105 yen. This price is to rise to 108 yen. However, if sales
will not decrease much even if the price is raised to 110 yen, the price may be raised to 110 yen.
On the other hand, if the price is raised to 110 yen and demand drops dramatically, then the pricewill have to be kept at 105 yen. There may be such a product. How price changes, like the cases I
just mentioned, is also of interest to me.

I mentioned that I am interested in corporate taxation, but I have also done research on otherareas of public finance, such as local government finance, social security, and other areas of
public finance, and while it is not the subject I still devote the most time to, I continue to do soon an ongoing basis. I will actively support my students in my seminar by following theirinterests, including topics that I have studied or continue to study. Then, I ask the seminar
students to choose a topic for their paper that is of interest to them, well arranged at a level thatthey can understand at the undergraduate level. Indeed, so far we have had students in theseminar who are interested in "taxation," "local government finance," and "social security" everyyear. Some years we had students who were interested in other topics, such as government
bonds, infrastructure development, and so on.
『Student initiative is important! 』
Please tell us about your educational philosophy.
What we value most is the spontaneity of the seminar students. I want them to value their own
motivation. I know that there are a lot of doubts about what they want to do, but I want toencourage their spontaneity on a day-to-day basis. My seminar holds training camps in bothspring and summer, but I have never told them to do it in both spring and summer. We also
participate in essay contests in which other universities also participate, but I do not tell them toparticipate because I have decided to do so; rather, I take a stance of respecting theirindependence, saying that if they want to participate, I will support them, and if they do not wantto participate, I let them think of something else. Of course, the final decision on a thesis topic,etc., is also narrowed down, since a topic on which a thesis could be written is not lying aroundanywhere at any time. We present several options and ask students to choose the one that best
suits their interests. We encourage students to be proactive and make their own decisions.
『I became interested in economics because of the consumption tax. 』
Please tell us about your student days.
Consumption tax is still one of my specialties, and it was the reason why I chose the economics
department when I was a student. The year before I entered college, there was a debate about
whether to introduce a consumption tax, and as a senior in high school, I knew that something
big was going on, even though I had no idea about economic issues. I had always hoped to beinvolved in some kind of policy making, but there was a tendency back then, more so than now,that if you wanted to become a bureaucrat, you had to have a law degree. Of course, now weneed to have knowledge of economics to have an idea of what kind of policy we should make.
Law alone is not enough to determine the right or wrong policy. We need to be able to deal withsophisticated economic issues. The most symbolic example of this was the economic crisis of
1997. Nowadays, it is taken for granted that it is impossible to formulate policies without
knowledge of economics, but even before that, I had been thinking about how economics could
be used to formulate some kind of policy. I became interested in what kind of economic effects aconsumption tax would have, and that is when I decided to study economics. It was during mystudent days that I eagerly attended classes in the economics department on taxation and publicfinance.

『I want people to pay attention to economic policy. 』
What are you looking for in a second-year student who is interested in the Doi Seminar?
In terms of the field, we welcome those who have some interest in how to make better fiscal andother economic policies. Furthermore, if you don't like economics, I'm not sure it's for you.
You don't have to like it, though. In the end, we welcome anyone interested in how to analyze
economic policy using economics as an analytical tool.
『Part of a scholar's professional life.』
What about Twitter?
Basically, we don't talk about our personal lives. The professional life of a scholar is not justbeing involved in teaching and research on campus. It may be a bit of an exaggeration to call it asocial contribution, but I also have the opportunity to attend and speak at government policy
meetings. Therefore, I would like to inform you as much as possible about what I did yesterday,and what I am going to do today, tomorrow, and so on in a short time span. However, because of
my personality, I tend to take the brunt of policy issues where opinions tend to be at odds witheach other, and I am sometimes subjected to harsh comments. However, we will try to clear up
any misunderstandings, and there are various opinions out there. As with the corporate tax
mentioned earlier, in order to avoid unnecessary burdens on the people, we are asking them tobear the burden in other ways. I am trying to clear up misconceptions about such policies. I justwant to ask you to say one thing, and that is to stop just attacking me personally on the internet(laugh). There are other economists who have received some heartless comments and have said
that they won't do it anymore or reduce the number of times they speak out. However, if we stop
doing that, it is often the case that policies that should be regarded as good are misunderstood as
bad, including misunderstandings about the nature of the policy, so I try to explain those areas ina steady manner to clear up misunderstandings.
『Heizo Takenaka Seminar and Motoshige Ito Seminar』
About in-seminars
In seminar, I work with the Heizo Takenaka Seminar at SFC and the Motoshige Ito Seminar at
the University of Tokyo. The research specialties of these two seminars are different, and thestudents rather enjoy the differences. Of course, the presentations we provide to these seminars
are often on fiscal matters, since we provide what we are doing. On the other hand, the Takenaka
Seminar focuses on economic policies that are not limited to public finance, and the Ito Seminar
specializes in international economics, so we often talk about trade issues with other countries.
We tend to make presentations where there are such differences, and we think that it is an
attractive thing to have the other seminars make a presentation and learn from each other.
『Immerse Yourself Into Economics!" 』☆Finally, please give a message to the second-year students. ☆
If you have the opportunity to study economics, we would like you to be imbued with theeconomics way of thinking about things at least once. Of course, it's okay to not accept
everything that economics says... In this sense, I believe that you should immerse yourself in
economics at least once, and if you can keep the concept of economics in your mind after
graduation when you think about what to do with your life, then you are well worth graduating

from the economics department. In that sense, I would like you to immerse yourself in
economics at least once.