Why Are Japanese Wages So Sluggish?

Martin Sommer

No 09/97, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: Over the past decade, productivity-adjusted wages have grown at a slower pace in Japan than in other rich countries. This paper suggests that Japan's dualities between regular and "nonregular" labor market contracts and the relatively inefficient services sector have exacerbated the negative impact of globalization and technical change on the labor income share felt in all advanced economies. Reforms aimed at increasing productivity in services and reducing gaps in employment protection and benefits between regular and nonregular workers could help put Japan's wages on an upward trajectory in the medium term.

Keywords: Wages; Japan; Developed countries; Productivity; Labor markets; Employment; Aging; Labor market reforms; Economic models; Cross country analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
Date: 2009-05-12
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2009/wp0997.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:09/97

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund
Address: International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().