Using longitudinal data on labour law in France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, the UK and the USA for the four decades after 1970, we estimate the impact of labour regulation on unemployment and equality, using labour’s share of national income as a proxy for the latter. We employ a dynamic panel...

Using longitudinal data on labour law in France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, the UK and the USA for the four decades after 1970, we estimate the impact of labour regulation on unemployment and equality, using labour’s share of national income as a proxy for the latter. We employ a dynamic panel...

The recent phenomena that the gig workers, franchisees and sellers using online shopping platform establish ‘unions’ to bargain collectively with their powerful counterparties give rise to questions as to how these organisations should be dealt under the competition laws. Although it is...

Gender diversity in corporate governance is a highly debated issue worldwide. National campaigns such as “2020 Women on Boards” in the United States and “Women on the Board Pledge for Europe” are examples of just two initiatives aimed at increasing female representation in the corporate...

This article discusses the relationship between Japanese labor law and employment customs, building on this rationalistic understanding of the Japanese employment customs. Our basic conclusion is as follows. The Japanese employment custom developed naturally through an agreement among the...

This study analyzes the mechanisms by which short-time work (STW) schemes affect firm's employment adjustments, using establishment-level data during the Great Recession from Japan. The findings show that STW leads to a decrease in both hiring and separations, with no significant positive effect...

The fraction of contingent workers among all workers in Japan increased from 17% in 1986 to some 34% in 2008. This paper investigates the reason for this secular trend. Both demand and supply increases of contingent workers relative to regular workers are important, as evidenced by the stable...

This study investigates the effect of a negative demand shock on the composition of worker types at firms and examines the change in the share of temporary agency workers. The 2007-2009 global financial crisis is used as the natural experiment to clearly identify the causal link between the...

The paper quantitatively assesses the importance of supply-side drivers in the transition of the Japanese economy from low-skilled to high-skilled sectors and its implication for growth, labor demand and labor income shares. A sectoral supply-side system, estimated over the 1980-2012 period,...

Are workers in modern economies working "too hard" – would they be better off if an equilibrium with fewer work hours were achieved? We examine changes in life satisfaction of Japanese and Koreans over a period when hours of work were cut exogenously because employers suddenly faced an...