The ‘lost decade’ in Japan was a period of steep surge in unemployment. It started in 1991 with the unemployment rate at 2.1%, and ended in 2002 when it reached a historical maximum of 5.5%. To assess the main causes of this rise we take a macroeconomic perspective and estimate a...

This paper sheds new light on the causes of the unemployment upsurge in Japan during the “fading 1990s”, an unprecedented period of structural crisis. We estimate a labor market model and identify the main macroeconomic determinants of labor demand and labor supply decisions in last decades....

Offshoring has lately received wide attention. Its potential effects, mainly to be materialized in employment and productivity dislocations, are yet to be fully assessed. However, some consensus has been attained as to how to proxy its theoretical definition at an aggregate level. Here we review...

First moves towards a real understanding of the offshoring phenomenon date back to very recent times, with employment and productivity effects occupying much of the literature around the subject. In particular for Japan, the studies conducted so far focus on the disaggregate level and put the...

This paper estimates the possible effects of offshoring on Japanese employment. Both the positive and negative effects are here considered as a result of both the offshoring of production (or materials) and services. My main finding is that the net amount of jobs lost to offshoring during the...