Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
submittedVersion
Publication Date
10-2013
Abstract
The statutory minimum wage in Japan has increased continuously for a few decades until the early 2000s even during a period of deflation. This paper examines the impact of the minimum wage on wage and employment outcomes under this unusual circumstance. We find that the minimum-wage increase resulted in the compression of the lower tail of the wage distribution among women and that the wage compression is only partially attributable to the loss of employment. The continuous increase in the minimum wage accounts for one half of the reduction in lower-tail inequality that occurred among women during the period between 1994 and 2003.
Keywords
minimum wage, wage inequality, employment loss, truncated distribution, deflation
Discipline
Asian Studies | Labor Economics
Research Areas
Applied Microeconomics
Publication
Labour Economics
Volume
24
First Page
264
Last Page
276
ISSN
1879-1034
Identifier
10.1016/j.labeco.2013.09.005
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
KAMBAYASHI, Ryo; KAWAGUCHI, Daiji; and YAMADA, Ken.
Minimum Wage in a Deflationary Economy: The Japanese Experience, 1994-2003. (2013). Labour Economics. 24, 264-276.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/1228
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2013.09.005