Fundamental reform of traditional Japanese labour market practices is essential to cope with rapid population ageing and the era of 100-year lives. A shift to more flexible employment and wage systems based on performance rather than age would enable Japan to better utilise its human capital....

This study investigates the impact of mergers on employment and employees’ wages in Japan, based on 111 mergers between listed firms observed between 1990 and 2003. Typically, the number of employees decreases by 4.45% three years after a merger, even after changes in sales and other variables...

Japan faces serious demographic headwinds. Under current fertility, employment and immigration rates, the population would fall by 45% by 2100 and employment by 52%. Given the challenges of a shrinking and ageing population, the government has pledged to “create a children-first economic...

In a series of studies written during the 1980s Bob Gregory and his co-authors compared the gender wage gap in Australia with that found in other countries. They found it was not the difference in human capital endowments that explained different gender wage gaps but rather the rewards for these...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the effects of foreign trade expansion on men and women's employment and earnings in Germany and Japan since the early-1970s. The analysis is prompted by trade studies identifying manufacturing industries appearing most vulnerable to foreign trade,...

This paper estimates the extent of intergenerational income mobility in Japan among sons and daughters born between 1935 and 1975. Our estimates rely on a two-sample instrumental variables approach using representative data from the Japanese Social Stratification and Mobility (SSM) surveys,...

This paper estimates the extent of intergenerational income mobility in Japan among sons and daughters born between 1935 and 1975. Our estimates rely on a two-sample instrumental variables approach using representative data from the Japanese Social Stratification and Mobility (SSM) surveys,...

This paper examines the returns to university education in Japan, using tuition, availability of universities, and labor market conditions as instrumental variables. To measure availability of universities, this paper uses total accredited capacity of all universities in the prefecture of...

Using data for the 1990's, this paper examines the role of sheepskin effects in the returns to education for Japan. Our estimations indicate that sheepskin effects explain about 50% of the total returns to schooling. We further find that sheepskin effects are only important for workers in small...