In recent times, Japan has experienced a rapid expansion in its service sector, increases in casual and part-time employment and record unemployment. In addition, there has been an associated rise of freeters and NEETs - predominantly young workers with tenuous labour market attachment. While...

In Japan a negative relationship between the labour force participation rate of married women and spouse income has been observed. It has also been remarked that the labour force participation rate of married women has almost no correlation with their level of educational attainment. This paper...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has grown far more rapidly than trade during the last two decades. As with the other prominent features of globalisation, FDI is controversial. The impact of FDI on labour markets has been of growing concern, particularly, for source countries. The deterioration...

Does trade affect the equilibrium rate of unemployment? To theoretically examine this question, we incorporate firm-union bargaining considerations into a model with a booming external sector and a stagnating manufacturing sector. In the model, a sustained improvement in the terms of trade...

We study the political economy of labour market policies. First, it is shown that tax and redistributive considerations lead inside workers to prefer spending on active labour market programmes to passive spending, e.g., on unemployment benefits. We also show that greater active spending may be...

This paper examines whether a country's economic reforms are affected by reforms adopted by other countries. A simple model of economic reforms is developed to motivate the econometric work. Unsurprisingly, the model predicts that reforms are more likely when factors of production are...

There has been no shortage of theories which purport to explain why globalisation may have, adverse, insignificant or even beneficial effects on income and earnings inequality. Surprisingly, the empirical realities remain an almost complete mystery. In this paper we use data on industrial wage...

For a number of OECD countries, the deterioration of labour market outcomes for less-skilled workers since the early 1980's has coincided with a steady decline in union membership. Globalisation is commonly believed to have contributed to both developments. However, recent studies fail to find...

Deindustrialisation, stagnant real incomes of production workers and increasing inequality are latter-day features of many economies. It's common to assume that such developments pressure policy-makers to relax environmental standards. However, when heavily polluting industries become less...

This paper examines whether a country's economic reforms are affected by reforms adopted by other countries. A simple model of economic reforms is developed to motivate the econometric work. Unsurprisingly, the model predicts that reforms are more likely when factors of production are...