A paper presented to the International Workshop on Civil Service and Military Pension Arrangements in Selected Countries of the Asia-Pacific organized by PIE, Hitotsubashi University supported by RIPPA held at Hitotsubashi Collaboration Center, Tokyo, Japan on 20-21 January 2011

Japanese public pension benefits, which were distributed quarterly through February 1990 and every other month since then, induce substantial but predictable income fluctuations. The relative magnitude of the payments combined with the delay between payments yields a stronger test of the...