Wataru Kobayashi, Director of Chiba University of Commerce Research Center for Economics

Aim of the special feature in "CUC View & Vision No. 48"

The government implements various policies using valuable financial resources raised through taxes and talented personnel recruited through civil service examinations. If the policies implemented are not beneficial, it would be a waste of scarce resources, and it would be better to redirect those resources to other policies or encourage their use in the private sector by reducing taxes and the number of civil servants. Therefore, when starting a new policy or continuing an existing policy, it is necessary to demonstrate that it is beneficial in a way that convinces many citizens.

What is needed for this is logic and evidence. If there is logic that implementing this policy will contribute to the national interest in this way, and evidence that shows that this will actually be realized rather than just armchair theory, then the usefulness of the policy will be more persuasive. EBPM (evidence-based policy making) is an effort to put this into practice, and is translated into Japanese as "evidence-based policy formation (or policy planning)."

As interest in EBPM grows, trial implementation of the approach is also underway in the annual administrative business review conducted by the government. This special feature focuses on the public process in fiscal 2018 (Heisei 30), and asks experts who participated in the process to look back on the discussions at that time and discuss the challenges and prospects for putting EBPM into practice.

The first article provides an overview of EBPM and logic models, then looks back on the discussion surrounding the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism's "Necessary Expenses for Remote Island Promotion (Remote Island Revitalization Grant)," in which the author, Sato (Hitotsubashi University), participated. Of particular interest is the case of the "Iki Island Exchange Promotion Project" (from fiscal year 2013), which was carried out with the support of this grant. This project disseminated information to foreign tourists, and it is said that the number of foreign overnight guests increased from 90 in fiscal year 2012 to 621 in fiscal year 2015.
The question here is whether the number of foreign overnight guests increased as a result of this project, or if it was just a coincidence, and to verify this it would be necessary to compare with other remote islands, but such an analysis has not been carried out. However, in order to do so it would be necessary to measure performance indicators for each remote island, but it has been pointed out that there are limitations to the data, such as the fact that the usability of statistical data changes depending on whether an entire municipality is an island ("all remote islands").

The second article focuses on the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries' "Project to Promote the Creation of Regions and Industries Supporting Healthy Eating Habits as Part of Measures to Increase Consumption of Domestic Agricultural Products." This project aims to contribute to increased consumption of domestic agricultural products by extending the functional food labeling system that began in 2015 to agricultural products, but author Nagahisa (PHP Institute) says that there is a "leap in logic" in this project. This is because even if consumption of functional agricultural products increases, there is also the possibility that consumption of other domestic agricultural products will decrease by the same amount.
Using this project as a subject, the author makes an ambitious attempt to verify the validity of creating a logic model after the fact for a project that was not designed based on EBPM. Of particular note is the argument presented under the title "How to create a logic model," which concludes that this is "the essence of EBPM," and on this basis makes thought-provoking remarks.

The third article focuses on four projects by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. In the 2018 disclosure process, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries created logic models for only one of the projects that were subject to review, but the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry created them for all of the projects that were subject to review. This article explains the four projects in which the author, Mr. Ohya (Keio University), participated.
Both projects contain important points, but it is particularly important to point out that in the "Regional and Urban Center Commercial Revitalization Support Project," the data presented as evidence to justify supporting shopping districts was obtained by asking the shopping districts "what role do they think is expected of them?" In the EBPM framework, the purpose of a project is often taken as a given, but if the ultimate goal is taken to be an increase in social welfare, it is also possible to ask whether the stated purpose of the project contributes to this, and to do so, efforts should be made to collect objective data.
It is also important to point out that projects related to the credit guarantee system are policies that deal with risks, and therefore they cannot be evaluated positively just because they have been used. In this case too, we should consider the path by which the project contributes to increasing social welfare, and set the project's objectives and performance indicators based on that.

The fourth is the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's "Project to Promote the Strengthening of Research Universities." This project aims to strengthen the research capabilities of universities by supporting the securing of research management personnel, etc. To measure the results, performance indicators such as the number of grants obtained and the number of papers published are set, and an analysis is conducted to compare these by dividing them into institutions selected for the project and those not selected. What is interesting is that the number of institutions included in the sample for this analysis is limited (10 selected institutions, 3 non-selected institutions), and in response to the criticism that the statistical rigor may be lacking, author Ito (Kansou Nippon) stated his view that "we do not expect EBPM to be (that) rigorous." This is because the author believes that there is significance in constructing a logic model and examining the effectiveness of policies while presenting evidence.
The background to this thinking is the recognition that in discussions like in the past, where logic and evidence are weak, discussions often end up being limited to subjective and emotional opinions, and often end up becoming pointless arguments with no end in sight. One example given is the exchange over supercomputers that took place during the past budget review. The point that evidence-based discussions are necessary so that departments in charge of projects can participate in the discussions with empathy and provide "awareness" to both sides as they move forward is a wise statement that only the author, who has been deeply involved in the issue, could make, and should be taken seriously.