Accounting for Japanese business cycles: A quest for labor wedges

The Japanese business cycle from 1980-2007 portrays less contemporaneous correlation of labor with output than in the US and also tends to lead output by one quarter. A canonical real business cycle model cannot account for these facts. This paper uses the business cycle accounting method a la Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan (2007) and shows that efficiency and labor market distortions are important in accounting for the quarterly business cycle fluctuation patterns in Japan. Fiscal and monetary variables such as labor income tax, money growth and interest rates cannot fully account for the distortions in the Japanese labor market.