Exploiting annual career records of female workers constructed from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC), this paper examines how the first job matters for an individual’s future job career. Using the regional unemployment rate in the year of graduation as an instrument for the first...

Despite changes in the economic and social environment following the burst of the bubble economy in the early 1990s, studies on the Japanese employment system so far have detected few major changes in seniority-based wage or lifetime employment patterns. Using recent microdata from the Basic...

Exploiting annual information on the work status of female workers from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC), this paper examines how an individual’s job status immediately after graduation, referred to as “first job,” matters for his/her future job career. Using the ratio of...

Japan is now facing the most drastic population aging among all the industrialized countries. The ongoing sweeping demographic changes-population aging combined with lower fertility-are posing an unprecedented challenge to the Japanese economy. Moreover, tax and social security reform have...