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Wage Stagnation in Japan
Author(s) -
Batra Ravi
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
pacific economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.34
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1468-0106
pISSN - 1361-374X
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0106.00025
Subject(s) - economics , economic stagnation , productivity , real wages , wage , liberian dollar , labour economics , distribution (mathematics) , efficiency wage , us dollar , keynesian economics , monetary economics , macroeconomics , exchange rate , mathematical analysis , mathematics , finance , politics , political science , law
In the last ten years, a number of economists have tried to explain the observed decline or stagnation in the real wages of the US labor force in spite of slow but steady rise in labor productivity. This paper reports a similar affliction for the Japanese labor market since 1973. The explanation for stagnant wages in spite of respectable productivity gains in Japan lies in the vast appreciation of the yen versus the dollar, and ultimately in the highly regulated retail distribution.