Labor Markets and Firm Benefit Policies in Japan and the United States

This volume, the fourth to result from a remarkably productive collaboration between the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Japan Center for Economic Research, presents a selection of thirteen high-caliber papers addressing issues in the employment practices, labor markets, and health, benefit, and pension policies of the United States and Japan.

After an opening chapter assessing the recent ascendance of the U.S. economy, papers diverge to tackle a range of specific issues. Focusing less on international comparison than on the assembly of high-quality research, contributors hone in on a variety of individual topics. Chapters delve into issues of youth employment, participatory employment, information sharing, fringe benefits, and drug coverage in Japan, as well as the dynamics of medical savings accounts, private insurance coverage, and benefit options in the U.S.

Like previous volumes stemming from NBER/JCER collaboration, this book represents a valuable mass of empirical data on some of the most notable employment and benefits issues in each nation, information that will both anchor and provoke scholarly analysis of these topics well into the future.

Seiritsu Ogura is an associate of the Japan Center for Economic Research.

Toshiaki Tachibanaki is a professor in the Institute for Economic Research at Kyoto University.

David A. Wise is the John F. Stambaugh professor of Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a research associate of the NBER. Together, the three coedited the most recent volume resulting from collaboration between the NBER and JCER, Aging Issues in the United States and Japan.