The Minimum Wage in a Deflationary Economy: The Japanese Experience, 1994|2003

The median wage in Japan has fallen nominally since 1999 due to a severe recession, while the statutory minimum wage has steadily increased over the same period. We used large micro-data sets from two government surveys to investigate how the minimum wage has affected wage distribution under the unusual circumstances of deflation. The compression of the lower tail of female wage distribution was almost completely explained by the increased real value of the minimum wage. The steady increases in the effective minimum wage reduced employment among low-skilled, young and middle-aged female workers, but the mechanical effect associated with disemployment on wage compression was minimal. These results held even after controlling for composition effects. The minimum wage contributed to the reduction in the pay gap between full-time and part-time workers.Minimum Wage, Wage Distribution, Wage Inequality, Employment, Deflation

Wage Distribution in Japan: 1989-2003

Diverging economic inequality has become a common focus of economic debate in developed countries. In particular, the recent experience of Japan has started attracting international attention. We take advantage of a rich micro-level data set from the Basic Survey on Wage Structure (1989-2003) to perform an in-depth analysis of the change in the inequality and distribution of the hourly wage. We observe that lower returns to education and years of tenure contribute to diminishing income disparity between groups for both sexes. A larger variance within a group contributes to the wage disparity for males, while an increased heterogeneity of workers' attributes contributes to the wage disparity for females. The Dinardo, Fortin, and Lemieux decomposition also confirms the basic findings from a parametric variance decomposition.Wage Distribution, Wage Equation, Variance Decomposition

The Minimum Wage in a Deflationary Economy: The Japanese Experience, 1994-2003

The statutory minimum wage has steadily increased for decades in Japan, while the median wage has fallen nominally since 1999 because of a severe recession. We use large micro-data sets from two government surveys to investigate how the minimum wage has affected the wage distribution under unusual circumstances of deflation. The compression of the lower tail of the female wage distribution is largely explained by an increased real value of the minimum wage. Steady increases in the effective minimum wage reduced employment among low-skilled, middle-aged female workers, but the mechanical effect associated with disemployment on wage compression was minimal.minimum wage, wage distribution, wage inequality, employment, deflation

The Case Study of Reflection of Student at Microteaching in Pre-service Teacher Education of Physical Education: Focus on reflection at case conference targeting practice of others

This study explored students’ reflection at a conference in terms of their collaboration with others. In particular, the students’ microteaching were targeted during the preservice teacher education conference. We examined how students’ remarks during the conference affected their peers’ reflection. The results clarified the following three points. First, the framework of students’ reflection at the conference targeting their peers’ microteaching included the “teaching skills,” “place-setting,” “warm-up or pre-exercise,” “ingenious use of teaching materials,” “ingenuous use of teaching equipment,” and “other” categories. The results clearly showed that the students’ reflection tended to focus on “teaching skills.” Second, when students reflected on the lecture contents afterwards, although they considered their peers’ remarks at the conference, they did not adopt their peers’ perspectives during their reflection. Thus, it was suggested that students’ awareness about their own microteaching tasks influences the adoption of other perspectives during reflection. Third, students were inferred to reflect about “pupil” and “teaching materials” from the teacher’s perspective. In addition, ensuring the quality of microteaching by choosing the appropriate teaching materials and devising a microteaching is necessary to facilitate reflections with diverse student perspectives