Impediments to the Productive Employment of Labor in Japan

We examine a number of personnel practices, laws and regulations that lower the supply of labor in the Japanese economy. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of impediments, those that restrict the movement of labor between firms, and those that discourage women from participating to a greater extent. Using other OECD countries and especially the United States as a benchmark, we estimate that removal of these barriers would increase the productive labor supply in Japan by some 13 to 18 percent and thus could raise the potential growth rate of the Japanese economy by roughly 1% per annum over a ten-year period.labor mobility; gender

Constraints on the Level and Efficient Use of Labor in Japan

We examine a number of personnel practices, laws and regulations that lower the supply of labor in the Japanese economy. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of impediments, those that restrict the movement of labor between firms, and those that discourage women from participating to a greater extent. Using other OECD countries and especially the United States as a benchmark, we estimate that removal of these barriers would increase the productive labor supply in Japan by some 13 to 18 percent and thus could raise the potential growth rate of the Japanese economy by roughly 1% per annum over a ten-year period.

Crumbling Pillar? Declining Union Density in Japan

This paper seeks to understand the recent decline of union density in Japan from 35% in 1975 to 28% in 1987. The decline in density is analyzed in terms of the changing proportion of workers in high and low unionization groups and the changes in density within those groups. Then using a stockflow relationship we look at how the organizing rate of new unions affects the overall density. A regression model assesses our interpretation of changes in Japanese density. Our principal findings are: (1) Structural shifts in the composition of employment and of the demographics of the work force account for only a modest proportion of the drop in Japanese density. As in the United States, most changes in density occur within industries and among defined demographic groups of workers. (2) Much of the decline in density is associated with the inability of Japanese unions to organize new establishments. We attribute this in part to lowered worker interest and stiffened management opposition to unionism following the oil shock, buttressed by unfavorable changes in the political and legal environment for collective bargaining and for union organization. and by other management actions, such as creating additional pseudomanagerial posts for older male workers.

NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES CONSTRAINTS ON THE LEVEL AND EFFICIENT USE OF LABOR IN JAPAN Hiroshi Ono

participants in the March 2002 NBER-CEPR-EIJS conference and the Oxford Labor Economics Seminar. All omissions and errors are of course our own. A slightly different version of this paper appears as SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 500. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Bureau of Economic Research. ©2003 by Hiroshi Ono and Marcus E. Rebick. All rights reserved. Short sections of text not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit including notice, is given to the source. Constraints on the Level and Efficient Use of Labor in Japa

Japanese Labour Markets: Can we Expect Significant Change?

The Folk Theorem for infinitely repeated games offers an embarrassment of riches; nowhere is equilibrium multiplicity more acute. This paper selects amongst these equilibria in the following sense. If players learn to play an infinitely repeated game using classical hypothesis testing, it is known that their strategies almost always approximate equilibria of the repeated game. It is shown here that if, in addition, they are sufficiently "conservative" in adopting their hypotheses, then almost all of the time is spent approximating an efficient subset of equilibria that share a "forgiving" property. This result provides theoretical justification for the general sense amongst practitioners that efficiency is focal in such games

Trade and the Wage Structure in the Presence of Price Differentials in the Product Market: The Japanese Labor Market 1965-1990.

The decomposition of demand into domestic, export, and import components in a cross-industry study of 18 two-digit manufacturing industries suggests that export growth has less of an impact on interindustry wage differentials than the equivalent growth in domestic demand. The difference seems to be greatest in the case of full-time workers in large firms. This result for Japan is different from those of similar studies for the United States and is consistent with a model of industry rent-sharing with domestic-international price differentials in the product market

The Importance of Networks in the Market for University Graduates in Japan: A Longitudinal Analysis of Hiring Patterns.

This study examines the extent to which the transition from university education to work is characterised by persistent hiring flows between university faculties and employers, rather than being characterised by an open market process. More than half of all hires may be attributed to persistence in hiring by employers from specific faculties. Persistence appears to be related to the screening of potential employees and to the assurance of supply. Persistence is also stronger in hiring from faculties with higher percentages of male graduates, supporting the view that investment in employment ties rises with the expected tenure of the hired employee

Rewards in the Afterlife: Late Career Job Placements as Incentives in the Japanese Firm.

This paper studies the significance of receiving assistance from one's preretirement employer in finding employment after mandatory retirement for male employees of large firms in Japan. I find that (1) workers who are assisted in finding postretirement work by their preretirement employers earn 20% higher wages than those who find work through other means, after controlling for individual characteristics. (2) Given that an average of 5 years is spent in employment after reaching the age of mandatory retirement, this wage differential has a present value to a preretirement employee that is comparable to the value of major promotions. This implies that postretirement job placement may function as an important incentive for older employees in the Japanese firm. (c) 1995 Academic Press, Inc