Excess Labour and the Business Cycle: A Comparative Study of Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Against the background of firm-specific human capital theory, this paper investigates empirically the relative propensity of manufacturing industries in Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States to hold excess labor over the business cycle. Both stock and utilization dimensions of the labor input are integrated into the study. Throughout, discussion is linked to earlier research that has analyzed the relative international performance of the Japanese labor market. Copyright 1996 by The London School of Economics and Political Science.