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

Ryo Kambayashi (), Daiji Kawaguchi and Ken Yamada

No 4949, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: deflation; minimum wage; wage distribution; wage inequality; employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 J31 J38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2010-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-sea
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published - published in: Labour Economics, 2013, 24, 264-276

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp4949.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Minimum wage in a deflationary economy: The Japanese experience, 1994–2003 (2013)
Working Paper: Minimum Wage in a Deflationary Economy: The Japanese Experience, 1994–2003 (2013)
Working Paper: The Minimum Wage in a Deflationary Economy: The Japanese Experience, 1994 |2003 (2009)
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4949

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().