The second “Family and Lifestyle Survey” is a registered consumer tester-based survey designed to collect information about (1) the basic attributes, education, job history, and quality of life of households in Japan; (2) household receipts of gifts and inheritances; (3) household income and...

This paper tries to quantitatively examine the impact of intergenerational transfers on asset inequality among Japanese households. For that purpose, we estimate an intergenerational asset transfer function with various control variables, using a unique micro dataset taken from the “Household...

This paper examines the impact of the erosion in seniority-based wages on lifetime labor income in Japan. Despite the importance of this issue, studies to date have not been able to address it directly because reliable datasets long enough to cover individuals’ entire careers were not...

This paper provides new evidence of consumers’ reaction to an anticipated sizable change in income. Until FY2002, Japanese public employees received predictable large bonus payments three times a fiscal year (in June, December, and March), but the March bonus was abolished in FY2003. We...

This study estimates average expenditures on children by families in Japan on the basis of the rich information about household expenditures and demographics obtained from the Family Income and Expenditure Survey. We show that the total expenditure on the first child accumulated from birth...

Exploiting annual career records of female workers constructed from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC), this paper examines how the first job matters for an individual’s future job career. Using the regional unemployment rate in the year of graduation as an instrument for the first...

Using high-frequency scan-based data on purchases by households compiled by a market research firm, this paper examines changes in consumption patterns in the period of confusion immediately after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. In particular, we focus on the panic buying of foods and daily...

This paper first develops a simple model to show that incentives for match-rigging in professional sumo differ depending on the rank to which a wrestler belongs. While incentives for match-rigging can arise for wrestlers in the top divisions (sekitori), few incentives arise for...

Taking advantage of annual panel data on part-time farmer households, this paper investigates whether a retirement consumption puzzle is observed in Japan. Our analysis shows that households’ expenditure does decline after the retirement of the household head and that changes in family size...

The "Family and Lifestyle Survey" is a registered consumer tester-based survey designed to collect information on (1) basic household attributes, education, and employment history; (2) parent household attributes (including education and employment history); (3) household asset holdings...