We construct worker flows for the Japanese labor market in an internationally comparable manner, and study the consequences of the deep and lasting recession of the 1990s in the Japanese labor market. We analyze the changes in employment, unemployment and inactivity, as well as the worker flows...

The search and matching model has recently come under criticism for its inability to account for some of the cyclical properties of the U.S. labor market. Shimer (2005) has shown that the basic version of the model is incapable of reproducing the volatility of the market tightness for reasonable...

Unemployment in Japan nearly tripled during the 1990s. Underlying this upsurge lie an increase in the probability of workers to lose their jobs and a decrease in the probability that the unemployed find jobs. This paper analyzes the sources responsible for these labor market changes in Japan in...