Silviase/jgov_v1.4_full_ann huggingface dataset:
内(知)

要求番号	事項	前年度算額	28年度概算要求額	对前年度比較增△減	備考
95016-2122-08-6010 委員等旅費	0	7,644	7,644	米国(9級、5泊7日)	1人 1回 @1,511,960	1,512(	0)
米国(4級、5泊7日)	1人 1回 @1,202,760	1,203(	0)
知的財產戦略本部經費	7,644(	0)
內国旅費(全国平均、日帰り)	4,121(	0)
(1)本部
本部員	2人 3回 @47,840 80%	230(	0)
(2)専門調査会	1,049(	0)
本部員
2調査会 2人 5回 @47,840 80%	765(	0)
専門委員
2調査会 1人 5回 @35,520 80%	284(	0)
(3)タスクフォース(TF)
専門委員	5TF 2人 10回 @35,520 80%	2,842(	0)
外国旅費	3,523(	0)
官民合同訪中ミッション
北京(6級、3泊4日)	1人 1回 @338,580	339(	0)
各種セミナー・イベント	3,184(	0)
北京(6級、3泊4日)	1人 5回 @338,580	1,693(	0)
欧州(9級、5泊7日)	1人 1回 @1,490,860	1,491(	0)
知的財產戦略本部經費	6,625(	0)
印刷製本費
報告書等	1種類 3,000部 @60 1.08	842(	0)
会議費	2,623(	0)
飲み物代	31(	0)
(1)専門調査会	2調査会 20回 30本 @80%	9(	0)
(2)TF	5TF 20回 30本 @80%	22(	0)
弁当代
TF	2TF 20回 30個 @2,000 1.08	2,592(	0)
雑役務費	3,160(	0)
速記料	691(	0)
内(知)

要求番号	事項	前年度算額	2 8 年度概算要求額	对前年度比較增△減	備考
95016-2123-09-1040 情報処理業務庁費	0	1,494	1,494	(1)本部(2)專門調查会翻訳料報告書(和文英訳)知的財產戦略本部經費雑役務費インターネット中継	4回 1H @21,6002調查会 7回 2H @21,6004種類 75枚 @229	86(605)2,469(0)1,494(0)
ESRI Discussion Paper Series No.12

# Did the Shopping Coupon Program Stimulate Consumption? Evidence from Japanese Micro Data

by

Masahiro Hori, Chang-Tai Hsieh, Keiko Murata, and Satoshi Shimizutani

April 2002

Economic and Social Research Institute

Cabinet Office

Tokyo, Japan
# Did the Shopping Coupon Program Stimulate Consumption? Evidence from Japanese Micro Data $ ^{*} $

by

Masahiro Hori, Chang-Tai Hsieh, Keiko Murata, and Satoshi Shimizutani

April 2002

Main Text : Did the Shopping Coupon Program Stimulate Consumption?

..... 1.

Appendix : Shopping Coupons in the Family Income Expenditure Survey.

..... 34.

Please address correspondence to:

Chang-Tai Hsieh, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA chsieh@princeton.edu

Satoshi Shimizutani, Cabinet Office, Tokyo, Japan

satoshi.shimizutani@mfs.cao.go.jp

Masahiro Hori, ESRI, Cabinet Office, Tokyo, Japan

masahiro.hori@esri.aco.go.jp
## Abstract:

In March, 1999, the Japanese Government handed out “shopping coupons” worth 20,000 yen (about 200 dollars) to families for every child under the age of 15 and to roughly half of Japan’s elderly population. In total, 25 percent of Japan’s population received the coupons. The coupons expired after six months and had to be spent within the recipient’s local community. We use variation in the impact of the program across families with different numbers of children and variation across prefectures to identify its impact on consumption. We control for "normal" seasonal patterns of consumption across families and prefectures by comparing the seasonal variation in consumption in the spring of 1999 with that in previous years when the coupons were not distributed. Our two sets of difference-in-difference estimates suggest that the MPC out of the coupons ranged between 0.2-0.3 in the first month the coupons were distributed. However, families that received coupons spent less in subsequent months, so the MPC falls to 0.1 when we measure the change in consumption over the next 3 or 4 months.
### 1. Introduction

The continued stagnation of the Japanese economy, despite the massive expansionary fiscal policies undertaken by the Japanese authorities over the last few years, is surely one of the major dilemmas of macroeconomic policy makers around the world today. For those who believe that fiscal policy is effective in stimulating aggregate demand, the Japanese experience poses a major challenge. The fiscal expansion undertaken by Japan has been of unprecedented magnitude, yet the Japanese economy remains mired in recession. Many people have suggested that factors such as the stance of monetary policy and the condition of the banking sector are responsible for Japan's continued stagnation. Thus, it is possible that fiscal policy may have been helpful, but its expansionary effect is simply overwhelmed by factors beyond the control of the fiscal authorities. However, an alternative explanation is that in the current state of the Japanese economy, expansionary fiscal policy is simply useless – that in the state of uncertainty that the Japanese economy finds itself in, households will simply choose to save rather than to spend any additional disposable income it receives.

Our objective in this paper is to examine the consumption response to an unusual experiment in Japanese fiscal policy. In the spring of 1999, the Japanese government implemented the “regional promotion coupons program,” perhaps better known as the “shopping coupon program.” This program provided coupons worth 20,000 yen (about 200 dollars) that could be used for most purchases to families for every child under the age of 15 and to roughly half of Japan’s elderly population (people over the age of 65). What was unusual about the program was that the coupons expired after six months if they were not used and that they had to be spent within a household’s local community (city, village, or town). The number of people eligible for the coupons amounted to approximately 25 percent of the total population in Japan and the total amount distributed was approximately 620 billion yen (about 6 billion US dollars).
To measure the impact of the shopping coupons on consumption, we use two identification strategies that are based on two independent data sources. Our first identification strategy uses micro-data on household consumption and exploits the fact that the coupons were provided to families depending on the number of children under the age of 15. This data does not allow us to reliably identify the elderly people who received the coupons, so we can only measure the impact of the coupons distributed to children. To measure the impact of the program, we measure the impact of the program on consumption by comparing the seasonal variation in consumption between families with different numbers of children (under the age of 15) in the Spring of the 1999 with the cross-sectional distribution in other years (1990-1998) when the coupons were not distributed. This difference in difference approach controls for the fact that the “normal” seasonal pattern of consumption will differ across families with different numbers of children.

We implement this difference-in-difference estimation procedure on micro-data from successive six-month panels of the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES), a nationally representative household consumption survey, from 1990 to 2000. Our estimates suggest that the coupons had a small effect on expenditures on semi-durables (primarily clothes) immediately after the coupons were distributed. However, the households that received more coupons spent less on semi-durables in the subsequent months, so the net effect on consumption was smaller than what the additional expenditure in the first 1 or 2 months the coupons were distributed would indicate. Therefore, while our estimates suggest that the marginal propensity to consume from the coupon ranged from 0.2 to 0.3 in the month the coupons were distributed, but the MPC falls to 0.1 when we measure the change in consumption for three or four additional months.

Our second identification strategy exploits the fact that the coupons had to be spent within each household’s local community. Using data on monthly retail sales in
each prefecture, we compare the change in regional retail sales in a prefecture where a larger fraction of the population received the shopping coupons to that in a prefecture where a smaller fraction of households received the coupons in 1999, and compare this difference to the cross-prefecture difference in the seasonal patterns of expenditures in previous years. $ ^{1} $ The advantage of this strategy relative to our estimates based on microdata from the household consumption survey is that it captures the response of consumption of the elderly people to the shopping coupons, as well as that of households with children. Our estimates indicate that the coupon program had net positive effect on consumption and the estimated impact on consumption is roughly the same magnitude as that indicated by the micro consumption data, on the order of a MPC of 0.1.

In addition to its relevance for Japanese macroeconomic policy, and to Japanese fiscal policy in particular, this paper contributes to the large body of literature on the empirical relevance of the life-cycle/permanent income hypothesis of consumption. Our work in this paper follows the recent body of work that exploits quasi-natural experiments to identify households that are subject to anticipated income changes. $ ^{2} $ What is unique about the episode we exploit is that the households were, in effect, forced to spend the anticipated income change. As in all schemes in which households are forced to spend (or save) a particular amount (such as in many social security programs), the central question is the extent to which households simply substitute for what they are forced to do.

This paper is organized as follows. The next section briefly describes the shopping coupon program. We then turn to a description of the data we use to analyze the program. The next section turns to estimates of the program across families with different numbers of children. The next section uses regional sales data to analyze the impact of the program across prefectures. The final section concludes.
### 2. The “Shopping Coupon” Program

The shopping coupons program was adopted as part of the “Emergency economics measures” approved by the Japanese government on November 16, 1998. Under the program, a coupon worth 20,000 yen per eligible person was given to two groups of people. First, coupons were provided to households with a child under the age of 15 (one coupon for every eligible child), regardless of the household’s income. Second, coupons were also distributed to two broad groups of elderly people: (1) those who received state-funded pensions and; (2) those over the age of 65 who did not pay taxes in either 1998 or 1999. $ ^{3} $ More than half of the elderly over the age of 65 fell into one of these two categories. More than 31 million people qualified for these coupons, which is slightly more than 25 percent of Japan’s population. Of this number, 11.6 million were elderly (roughly 56 percent of all people over the age of 65). The total amount distributed was 621.4 billion yen, which represented roughly 0.12 percent of Japan’s GDP.

The shopping coupons were funded by the Japanese central government, but were distributed by local governments. $ ^{4} $ The coupons had to be spent in the recipient’s local community (city, town, or village), although the local government had the authority to widen the area, and sometimes did in rural regions. The coupons were not transferable and change was not provided for purchases smaller than 1,000 yen. $ ^{5} $ The coupons could be spent on most consumption goods and services, although most local governments restricted their use to private consumption items. $ ^{6} $ Finally, the coupons expired in September 1999 if they had not been used by then.

Most local governments began to distribute the coupons in early March. Based on
the household registration data that they kept, local governments were able to determine the precise amount every family with children was eligible for. Because of this, households with children received the coupons automatically. However, since only about half of the elderly people were eligible for the coupons, this group of people had to file an application to receive the coupons. By the end of June, the coupons had been distributed to 30.968 million people, which is 97 percent of the estimated number of eligible people (31.922 million). $ ^{7} $ By April 20, merchants had redeemed almost 40 percent of total number of coupons distributed under the program. This figure increased to 79.5% by June 30 and finally reached 99.6% (618.961 million yen out of 621.402 million yen).

In addition to the administrative data, there are two surveys of coupon recipients that provide more information on when the coupons were received and how they were spent. First, the Economic Planning Agency (henceforth, EPA) conducted a survey in July 1999 of 9,000 people who had received these coupons. $ ^{8} $ This survey shows that 74.4% of households with children under 15 got their coupons in March, followed by another 16.8% in April (figure 1, panel A). Because the elderly had to file an application to receive the coupons, it took more time for the coupons to be distributed to these households. Nonetheless, by the end of April, almost 90 percent of the eligible elderly had received the coupons (figure 1, panel B). A second survey by the Management and Cooperation Agency (henceforth, MCA) provides similar information. $ ^{9} $ This survey indicates that 81.8% of households with children under 15 received their coupons within the first week after the local governments began to distribute them.

These surveys also show that many households spent their coupons relatively soon after they were received, despite the fact that the coupons were effective for six months.
The EPA survey indicates that by April, almost 70 percent of households with children had already spent their coupons (figure 1, panel A). The MCA survey provides corroborating evidence that most households spent their coupons rather quickly. This survey indicates that 11.8% of the coupons were redeemed on the same day they were distributed, and that at the end of four weeks, 80% of the coupons had been spent (figure 2).

In sum, the administrative data indicates that most of the intended beneficiaries of the coupons actually received them. Moreover, the two surveys suggest that the vast majority of eligible households received their coupons in March and April, and that they spent the coupons very quickly after they received them. Obviously, the central question is whether the coupons were spent on items that the households would have purchased anyway.

### 3. Data

Our first source of data is the micro-level data from the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) from 1990 to 2000. $ ^{10} $ This survey provides detailed information on income and expenditures for individual households as well as on the characteristics of these households. The monthly consumption data is compiled from a diary, which is collected twice a month. The survey covers approximately 8,000 households, which are representative at the national level. Single households and households employed in the agriculture or fishery industries are not surveyed. $ ^{11} $ Each household is surveyed for six months and one–sixth of the households are replaced by new households every month, making it possible to construct six-month panels.
To improve the reliability of our estimates, we make the following cuts. First, we delete households in which the household head is self-employed. We restrict our analysis to households with wage earners for two reasons. First, monthly information on income is available only for these households. In addition, the monthly pattern of income for wage earners is very different than that of self-employed households due to the bonus system. Second, we also exclude a household if the reported age of the household head decreases or increases by more than one year during 6 months or if the household's tenancy status changes from owner to renter (or from renter to owner), because these changes are likely to be due to large shocks that may also have large effects on the household's consumption. Third, we exclude all households with a person over 65 or more of age, so our focus is on consumption of households with children under the age of 15. We do this because we are not able to reliably identify elderly people who received a coupon in the FIES. $ ^{12} $ Fourth, a household is excluded if the number of family members is greater than 10 because the consumption patterns of large extended households are likely to be significantly different from that of smaller households that are the norm in Japan. $ ^{13} $ Fifth, we excluded a household if the absolute change in consumption between successive months exceeds the mean by more than three standard deviations. Finally, we also exclude a household if there is a change in the family size between successive months. After these cuts, we end up with a sample of roughly 600 households in each six-month panel.

To focus on the consumption response of households in the spring of 1999 when the coupons were distributed, we form two panels of households for each year. For each year (1990-2000), we form panels from January to June and from February to July. As previously discussed, most of the coupons were distributed and spent by June. Since our
focus is to compare the change in consumption after the coupons were distributed in March of 1999, the January-June and February-July panels are the only ones that use to measure the change in consumption after the coupons were spent. Finally, we aggregate the different items into four consumption categories: durables, semi-durables, non-durables, and services. $ ^{14} $ The summary statistics of our two panels can be seen in Table 1.

Our second dataset is from the published tabulations of the Current Survey of Commerce conducted by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). $ ^{15} $ This is a census of every retail establishment or supermarket with more than 50 employees. $ ^{16} $ Using these data, we compile monthly estimates of retail trade in 47 prefectures in Japan from 1990 to 1999, and combine this data with administrative data on the number of coupons distributed in each prefecture. The summary statistics of this second dataset can be seen in Table 2.
### 4. Impact of Coupons across Families

We begin by using the six-month panels from the FIES to estimate whether consumption changes when the coupons were distributed. As discussed, each family received a coupon depending on the number of children under the age of 15. We can therefore compare whether consumption of families with a large number of children under the age of 15 in March to July of 1999 increases by more than families with a smaller number of children, relative to the cross-sectional difference in consumption patterns of similar households in other years (when the coupons were obviously not distributed).

Our basic empirical specification is the following linear Euler equation:

$$ \ln\left(\frac{C_{h,t\ (After\ March)}}{C_{h,t\ (Before\ March)}}\right)=a_{1}\cdot\left(\frac{Coupon_{h,t}}{Monthly\ Income_{h,t}}\right)+Z_{h,t}^{\quad^{\prime}}\cdot a_{2}+Year_{t}^{\quad^{\prime}}\cdot a_{3} $$

where h indexes households and t refers to the year. The dependent variable is the log of the ratio of the sum of consumption in household h in year t in the period after March

$ [C_{h,t}\ (After\ March)] $ to the average monthly consumption before March $ [C_{h,t}\ (Before\ March)] $ . The dependent variable is thus the cumulative change in consumption after March relative to average monthly consumption prior to March. The main independent variable is $ \frac{Coupon_{h,t}}{MonthlyIncome_{h,t}} $ , which is the total value of coupons received by a family relative to the household's monthly income. $ ^{17} $ The total value of coupons is calculated as the number of children under the age of 15 x 20,000 yen for households in the 1999 panels. $ ^{18} $ For the other years (1990-1998), the coupon amount is obviously set to zero. Finally, $ Z_{h,t} $ is a vector of household characteristics (a quadratic in the age of the household head, the number of children under the age of 15, and the number of other family members), and $ Year_{t} $ is a vector of indicator variables for year. The coefficient of interest is $ a_{1} $ , which measures the elasticity of consumption to income due to the coupon program.
Since the total amount of coupons received by a family is completely determined by the number of children under the age of 15, equation (1) essentially tests whether the change in consumption after March is greater among families with more children (under the age of 15) relative to families with a smaller number of children, controlling for the cross-sectional differences between similar families in other years when the coupons were not distributed. Our dataset consists of six-month panels from 1990 to 1999, which means that we have nine years to control for cross-sectional differences in seasonal consumption patterns. To compare the impact of the coupons at different points in time, we run up to five regressions with each one of our panels. Specifically, for the January-June panel, we estimate four regressions with the following dependent variables: change in consumption in March, in March and April, in March through May, and in March through June, all relative to average monthly consumption in January and February. Similarly, for the February-July panel, we estimate the same four regressions (but this time relative to consumption in February), and one additional regression that measures the change in consumption in March through July relative to February. The main advantage of measuring the change in consumption in March through June (or March through July) is that we know that almost all the coupons were spent over this time period. In contrast, the estimates in the earlier months (say March or March-April) are downwardly biased, since some of the households did not receive and redeem their coupons during this time period. $ ^{19} $

As a benchmark, we begin by measuring the cross-sectional distribution of changes in consumption in the spring of 1999. To do this, we employ a version of equation (1) that only uses the 1999 panel, and that omits the indicator variables for year and controls for family size. Since the amount of the coupon is completely determined
by the number of children under the age of 15 in the household, these estimates measure whether the consumption of households with a larger number of children under the age of 15 increased by more than households with a smaller number of children. As can be seen (Table 3), there is a large difference in the change in consumption between these households, particularly for semi-durables. However, it is clear that we cannot attribute this cross-sectional difference to the impact of the coupons, because there are clearly many reasons to expect the seasonal pattern of consumption to differ across families with different numbers of children. For example, April is the beginning of the school semester in Japan, and families with children will obviously spend more on clothes and other school items in the months of March and April.

To address this problem, we turn to estimates that compare the cross-sectional differences in consumption in 1999 with that in other years. These difference-in-difference estimates, shown in Table 4, indicate that the coupons appeared to have only had an effect on expenditures on semi-durables. The estimates of $ a_{1} $ for durables, non-durables, and services are invariably unstable and statistically insignificant. In contrast, the estimates of $ a_{1} $ for semi-durables are always positive and in most cases, statistically significant. Nonetheless, the estimated effect is small. For example, the elasticity of consumption of semi-durables from March through July (for the February-July panel) is 1.63, which suggests that the marginal propensity to consume of the coupons was roughly 0.1. $ ^{20} $

It is interesting to note that the estimates of $ a_{1} $ for semi-durables decline as we move to the right across a row in Table 4. The estimated elasticity of consumption of semi-durables is 3.34 in March (relative to average monthly consumption before the coupons were distributed), 2.41 in March-April, and falls to 1.15 in March-June. $ ^{21} $ In addition, bear in mind that the estimates in the earlier months are likely to be downwardly