Unemployment benefit systems are nonexistent in many developing economies. Introducing such systems poses many challenges which are partly due to the high level of informality in the labor markets of these economies. This paper studies the consequences on the labor market of implementing an...

The Japanese labor market has been experiencing considerable transformations over the recent decades. We analyze the implications of some of these actual and potential transformations, whose impact may not be homogeneous across workers of different ages. We first develop a life-cycle search and...

In developing economies, the fraction of informal workers can be as high as 70% of total employment. For economies with significant informal sectors, business cycle fluctuations and labor market policy interventions can have important effects not only on the unemployment rate, but also on the...

In this paper, we study the structural change occurring in Japan's post-World War II era of rapid economic growth. We use a two-sector neoclassical growth model with government policies to analyze the evolution of the Japanese economy in this period and to assess the role of such policies. Our...

Unemployment in Japan nearly tripled during the 1990s. Underlying this upsurge lie an increase in the probability of workers to lose their jobs and a decrease in the probability that the unemployed find jobs. This paper analyzes the sources responsible for these labor market changes in Japan in...

The proportion of part-time, dispatch, and temporary workers has increased in many developed economies in recent years. These workers receive lower average wages and benefits, and are subject to lower employment stability. This paper analyzes the effects of initially taking such jobs on the...