We investigated whether people were insured against unexpected losses caused by the Great Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe) earthquake in 1995 and found that the full consumption insurance hypothesis was rejected overwhelmingly, suggesting the ineffectiveness of the formal/informal insurance mechanisms...

As Japan's financial system becomes more market oriented, depositor discipline is playing a larger role in the monitoring of banks. Matching household survey data with banks' financial data, we examine households' response to bank risk and different deposit insurance schemes. We find that bank...

This paper utilizes historical information to explore the relationship between labor force participation of middle aged and old people and the disability program in Japan. In particular, we explore the time series dimension to identify what has determined the trend in disability program...

This paper utilizes historical information to explore the relationship between labor force participation of middle aged and old people and the disability program in Japan. In particular, we explore the time series dimension to identify what has determined the trend in disability program...

Japan's traditional long-term employment practice, loosely termed “lifetime employment,†once attracted much attention, but its fortunes have not been tracked since the 1990s. The authors use micro data from the Japanese government's Basic Survey on Wage Structure to estimate permanent...

We observed a remarkable increase in elderly care expenses in Japan after the introduction of public elderly care insurance in 2000. This study explores the possibility that a greater number of care providers under the deregulation of the entry policy stimulated care utilization. We take...

This paper investigates the coping strategies employed by victims of the Great Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe) earthquake in 1995. Using a unique household data set, we show that households that held a large amount of collateralizable assets before the catastrophe and were free from a binding borrowing...

pJapan's total fertility rate declined to 1.29 in 2003, the lowest in its modern era. Such a drastic decline in fertility rate is extremely unusual. The decreased birthrate creates an unbalanced demographic composition between the productive and dependent populations. This development may result...