This article describes long-term trends in hours worked, both in Japan and other countries, and uses economic theory to suggest explanations for the observed patterns. There are four main findings: (1) In Japan, the reduction in hours worked of regular workers has typically been during periods of labor shortage. (2) The reform of the Labor Standard Law in 1987 contributed to reducing the hours worked by Japanese workers to the same level as that of their American counterparts. Nonetheless, the hours worked by regular workers have been stable since 1993. (3) It is difficult to explain the differences between Japan and continental European countries in per capita hours worked based only on tax wedges. It is necessary to take into consideration the differences in the uses and benefits of taxes, including payroll taxes. (4) The reduction in hours worked in continental European countries is largely due to collective agreements and to governments' regulation of working hours based on the idea of "work-sharing," creating jobs by reducing working hours. In reality, hours worked were reduced but at the detriment of employment.

In this article, I conduct an international comparison of the financial health of households using data on household wealth and indebtedness for the G-7 countries and show that, even though household borrowings in Japan were the highest among the G-7 countries, at least until 2000, household assets were also high in Japan, as a result of which household net worth and financial health in Japan were among the highest in the G-7 countries. Turning to long-term trends in Japan over time, I find that Japan has shown a sharp increase over time in household borrowings, at least until 2000, and a sharp increase over time in both household assets and household net worth, at least until 1990. It is not clear whether the greater financial health of Japanese households is due more to culture or to government policies, institutions, and other noncultural factors, but it appears that long-term trends over time in household assets, liabilities, and net worth in Japan can be explained much better by noncultural factors than by culture.

This study provides new estimates of the income distribution of high income earners and uses recent empirical findings related to the elasticity of taxable income in Japan to derive the optimal highest marginal tax rate. Based on the 2003 Top Taxpayer Rankings, the Pareto distribution coefficient (α) is estimated to be 2.1. Compared with Mizoguchi (1987), this suggests the possibility that income in Japan is concentrated, though not to the same degree as in the United States, among the top several thousand to several tens of thousands of high income earners. On the other hand, recent empirical research has estimated the elasticity of taxable income to be in the range from 0.051 to 0.28. This result indicates that the optimal highest marginal tax rate in Japan is higher than the current level as long as the social welfare weight attached to the most highly skilled individuals is not too large. It also supports the argument for increasing taxes on high income earners. Also, the elasticity of taxable income is influenced by the withholding tax and year-end adjustment system and by the earned income deduction.

In this article, I sample data from the JGSS-2006 and conduct an empirical analysis of the housework behavior of dual-earner couples in Japan using their housework participation frequency as the dependent variable. The results of this empirical analysis show that the housework behavior of husbands with wives working part-time is explained by the gender display model while the housework behavior of wives is explained by the autonomy model regardless of their employment type. The results also show that the housework behavior of husbands with wives working full-time is not explained by either the economic exchange model or the gender display model.

The purpose of this article is to empirically show how the housework behavior of husbands and wives has changed based on data on wives in dual-earner households obtained from the JPSC conducted by the Institute for Research on Household Economics in 1993, 2000, and 2007. The results show that the housework behavior of husbands in 2000 and 2007 is explained by the gender display model, while the housework behavior of wives is explained by the gender display model in 2000, but by the autonomy model in 2007.

This article takes up three representative arguments that regard Japanese bureaucracy as superior, harmful, or benign for the Japanese economy and supports the view that the Japanese bureaucracy cannot behave independently from the intentions of politicians. But the effect of Japanese bureaucracy on the quality of public policy in Japan is nonetheless important. I consider the problem of human resource management in the Japanese bureaucracy, and point out that the real defect within the present Japanese bureaucracy is not corruption or idleness but its incompetence in recommending appropriate public policies that maximize social welfare.

This article gives an overview of the empirical studies of the determinants of students' academic performance in Japan. Recent development in the availability of achievement data have enabled researchers, including economists, to identify the determinants of education outcomes. Economists have great curiosity about the determinants of students' academic achievement because achievement gaps among school-age children result in future income inequality. Education production functions are estimated using student-level achievement data for Japanese students, with emphasis on estimating the effect of ability grouping. The empirical results show that students' test scores are strongly affected by family backgrounds, whereas school resource variables have a more limited impact. We cannot reject the hypothesis that the effect of reducing class size is zero. On the other hand, the effects of family backgrounds become small when students are grouped according to their ability, suggesting a possibility that schools can succeed in reducing the gaps in opportunities among students from different family backgrounds.