Author: Ikuo KumePublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 34
Book Description
Institutionalizing the Active Labor Market Policy in Japan
Author: Ikuo KumeInequality in the Workplace
Author: Jiyeoun SongPublisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801471001
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231
Book Description
The past several decades have seen widespread reform of labor markets across advanced industrial countries, but most of the existing research on job security, wage bargaining, and social protection is based on the experience of the United States and Western Europe. In Inequality in the Workplace, Jiyeoun Song focuses on South Korea and Japan, which have advanced labor market reform and confronted the rapid rise of a split in labor markets between protected regular workers and underprotected and underpaid nonregular workers. The two countries have implemented very different strategies in response to the pressure to increase labor market flexibility during economic downturns. Japanese policy makers, Song finds, have relaxed the rules and regulations governing employment and working conditions for part-time, temporary, and fixed-term contract employees while retaining extensive protections for full-time permanent workers. In Korea, by contrast, politicians have weakened employment protections for all categories of workers.In her comprehensive survey of the politics of labor market reform in East Asia, Song argues that institutional features of the labor market shape the national trajectory of reform. More specifically, she shows how the institutional characteristics of the employment protection system and industrial relations, including the size and strength of labor unions, determine the choice between liberalization for the nonregular workforce and liberalization for all as well as the degree of labor market inequality in the process of reform.
Labour Market Deregulation in Japan and Italy
Author: Hiroaki Richard WatanabePublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317689658
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 191
Book Description
Japan and Italy encountered severe economic problems in the early 1990s, and the governments had to deal with those issues effectively under the increasing neoliberal pressures of globalisation. In this context, labour market deregulation was considered an effective tool to cope with those economic problems. However, the forms and degrees of labour market deregulation in the two countries were quite different. This book seeks to explain the differences in labour market deregulation policies between Japan and Italy, despite the fact that the two countries shared a number of similar political, social and labour market (if not cultural) characteristics. Uniquely, it takes a political, rather than economic or sociological perspective to provide a theoretical and empirical analysis of the processes of labour market deregulation in the two countries. The precarious working conditions of an increasing number of non-regular workers has become a prominent social issue in many industrialised countries including Japan and Italy, but the level of the protection for these workers depends on a country’s labour market policies, which are affected by the power resources of labour unions and labour policy-making structures. This book provides a useful perspective for understanding the root causes of this phenomenon, such as the diffusion of ‘neoliberal’ ideas aimed at promoting labour-market flexibility under globalisation, and demonstrates that there is still room for politics to decide the extent of deregulation and maintain worker protection from management offensives even in an era of globalisation. Labour Market Deregulation in Japan and Italy: Worker Protection under Neoliberal Globalisation will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese politics, Italian politics, political economy and comparative politics.
Regime Shift
Author: T. J. PempelPublisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801485299
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
Pempel contrasts the political economy of Japan during two decades: the 1960s ̧when the nation e¡perienced conservative political dominance and high growth ̧and the early 1990s ̧when the "bubble economy" collapsed and electoral politics changed. The different dynamics of the two periods indicate a regime shift in which the present political economy deviates profoundly from earlier forms. This shift has involved a transformation in socioeconomic alliances ̧political and economic institutions ̧and public policy profile ̧rendering Japanese politics far less predictable than in the past. Pempel weighs the Japanese case against comparative data from the USA ̧Great Britain ̧Sweden and Italy ̧to show how unusual Japan's political economy had been in the 1960s. The te¡t suggests that Japan's present troubles are deeply rooted in the economy's earlier success.
Institutional Change in Japan
Author: Magnus BlomströmPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113418056X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 415
Book Description
This is a new analysis of recent changes in important Japanese institutions. It addresses the origin, development, and recent adaptation of core institutions, including financial institutions, corporate governance, lifetime employment, and the amakudari system. After four decades of rapid economic growth in Japan, the 1990s saw the country enter a prolonged period of economic stagnation. Policy reforms were initially half-hearted, and businesses were slow to restructure as the global economy changed. The lagging economy has been impervious to aggressive fiscal stimulus measures and has been plagued by ongoing price deflation for years. Japan’s struggle has called into question the ability of the country’s economic institutions, originally designed to support factor accumulation and rapid development, to adapt to the new economic environment of the twenty-first century. This book discusses both historical and international comparisons including Meiji Japan, and recent economic and financial reforms in Korea, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and New Zealand, placing the current institutional changes in perspective. The contributors argue that, contrary to conventional wisdom that Japanese institutions have remained relatively rigid, there has been significant institutional change over the last decade.
Changes in Japanese Employment Practices
Author: Arjan KeizerPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135233470
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
Keizer examines changing employment practices in Japan, focusing on the position of the Japanese firm that is confronted with the need to address the changing economic circumstances while also maintaining some fit with the wider set of institutions that govern the Japanese labour market.
The Political Economy of the Abe Government and Abenomics Reforms
Author: Takeo HoshiPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108843956
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 573
Book Description
Explores the politics and economics of the Abe government and evaluates major policies, such as Abenomics policy reforms.
Disparaged Success
Author: Ikuo KumePublisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150173184X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
Japanese scholars have begun to challenge conventional wisdom about effective labor organizing, and Ikuo Kume has written the first book in English to advance their controversial theory. Since at least the early 1980s, the power of organized labor has weakened in most advanced industrial countries. The decline of organized labor has coincided with the decentralization of labor-management relations. As a result, most observers assume that decentralized labor is destined to lose power in a capitalist economy, and that enterprise unions will tend to be docile and powerless.Kume documents the one notable exception. The Japanese trade union confederation has steadily grown in importance, expanding its scope beyond individual companies to national policy making. Kume traces the achievements of enterprise unionism in private firms. Labor, he argues, slowly gained legitimate corporate membership by establishing joint institutions with management. By the 1960s, labor-management councils, stimulated by foreign competition, had become a widespread feature of Japanese industry. Soon unions were regular participants in the government deliberation councils and in the information exchange that shaped policy when inflation hit the Japanese economy. The unions had become a full partner by the 1980s and were crucially involved in the 1993 defeat of the Liberal Democratic Party after thirty-eight years of rule.
The East Asian Miracle and Information Technology
Author: Nagy HannaPublisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821336541
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 193
Book Description
World Bank Discussion Paper No. 326.Draws on the successful experiences of five East Asian economies--Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Taiwan (China), and Hong Kong--to show how they have exploited the opportunities made possible by the information technology revolution and built sustainable competitive advantages in many high-value-added industries and services. The study examines the role of government in unleashing private-sector response, promoting the information technology industry, diffusing technology, and focusing resources on strategic elements of the national information infrastructure. It also explores the role of the private sector in influencing the development and use of the new technologies.
Models of Capitalism
Author: Evelyne HuberPublisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271023410
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 506
Book Description
Latin American societies have undergone fundamental changes in the past two decades, moving from capitalist economies with very wide-ranging state intervention to more market-driven systems. After a prolonged period of recession, these changes produced some successes in economic growth in the 1990s, but they also exacerbated many problems, especially poverty and inequality. Models of Capitalism examines why some societies with market economies perform much better than others in combining growth and equity, and what the less successful countries can learn from the more successful ones. The contributors look at different models of capitalism in Latin America, Northeast and Southeast Asia, and advanced industrial countries, asking which patterns of economic and social policies governments in the more successful societies pursued, and which configurations of institutions made pursuing such policies possible. The investigation focuses on economic policies designed to stimulate growth, on labor-market policies designed to promote a qualified labor force and increase productivity and wages, and on social policies designed to improve general human capital and to distribute life chances in an equitable way. The volume is innovative in explicitly connecting the discussion of growth policies with an analysis of labor market and social policies and in going beyond comparison of Latin American with East Asian approaches to include reference to equity-oriented policies in North America and Western Europe as well. This approach helps demonstrate how important policy design is in determining distributive outcomes at any given level of development. The contributors are Antonio Alas, Renato Baumann, Ha-Joon Chang, Carlos H. Filgueira, Fernando Filgueira, Robert Grosse, Thomas Janoski, John Myles, T. J. Pempel, Wilson Peres, David Brian Robertson, John Sheahan, John D. Stephens, V&íctor E. Tokman, and Bridget Welsh. Sponsored by the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies.