Policy Research Domains (Adjacent Basic Research Areas) A. Institutions Related to Financial and Labor Markets, and New Corporate Law and Governance

Empirical Analysis of Japan's Labor Market

Project Leader/Sub-Leader

KAWAGUCHI Daiji

KAWAGUCHI Daiji Faculty Fellow

Leader

Overview

2006

While the Japanese economy has shown signs of recovery, labor market indicators have improved little: the average wage has not increased and the size of non-regular employment has significantly increased. Under this rather stagnated labor market environment, the issue of the wage gap has attracted public and academic interest, but little progress has been made in gaining an overall picture of the wage gap with the use of large-scale government statistics; consequently, very little is known about matters such as the causes of wage differentials between regular and non-regular workers, and how the workers' wage mobility has changed over time. Our research aims to fill the gap between social interests and rigorous empirical analysis by using microdata from large-scale government statistics. The final goal is to derive labor market policy suggestions based on rigorous empirical analysis.

Major Research Results

2006

RIETI Discussion Papers