Despite changes in the economic and social environment following the burst of the bubble economy in the early 1990s, studies on the Japanese employment system so far have detected few major changes in seniority-based wage or lifetime employment patterns. Using recent microdata from the Basic...

This paper provides new evidence of consumers’ reaction to an anticipated sizable change in income. Until FY2002, Japanese public employees received predictable large bonus payments three times a fiscal year (in June, December, and March), but the March bonus was abolished in FY2003. We...

Using high-frequency scan-based data on purchases by households compiled by a market research firm, this paper examines changes in consumption patterns in the period of confusion immediately after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. In particular, we focus on the panic buying of foods and daily...