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 Survey on Wage Structure, this paper takes another look at developments in these two key elements of the Japanese employment system. In contrast with previous studies, we do find evidence that the two practices are eroding and that, hence, the traditional employment system overall has begun to unravel. Specifically, with regard to seniority wages, we found, for example, that the age-wage profile has become flatter in recent years, especially for employees in the middle and final phase of their career. And as for lifetime employment, we found a clear downward trend in the share of lifetime employees among younger, university-educated workers from the early 2000s. Taken together, the findings suggest that a growing share of educated younger workers choose to leave indefinite-contract jobs due to the poor prospects for seniority-based wage progression, while older workers choose to stay in their present job despite stagnating or falling wages, since it is more difficult for them to find alternative employment.JEL Classification: J21, J31, J01

Exploiting annual career records of female workers constructed from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC), this paper examines how the first job matters for an individual's future job career.Using the regional unemployment rate in the year of graduation as an instrument for the first job status (i.e., regular job or not), we confirm that an individual's first job status matters significantly for the future job status even for female workers in Japan, although the effect gradually declines over the years and effectively disappears within around ten years from graduation. However, the observed first job effect appears to depend on the post-graduation career path taken by an individual, in the sense that someone who was unsuccessful during the first job hunt at the time of graduation can make up for the negative effect if she is lucky enough to secure a job as a regular employee within a reasonable time period. JEL classification codes: J13; J62

The division of bequests among family members differs sharply between Japan and the United States. Whereas in the United States, bequests tend to be divided equally among decedents' children, they tend to be divided unequally in Japan. This paper first tries to answer why this is this case. We start by arguing that certain legal and institutional aspects that lead to equal bequests in the United States are not present in Japan. We then investigate patterns of bequest division in Japan to understand parental bequest motives. In particular, we compare the division of bequests in primary and secondary inheritances to examine parental motives and the role of traditional family values in Japan. While in the case of both "primary" and "secondary" inheritances (referring to inheritances where the first parent has died and inheritances in which the second parent has died, respectively) the patterns of bequest division in Japan look generally consistent with a variety of parental bequest motives proposed in the literature, the role of these motives, especially of the dynastic and strategic motives, is more prominent in primary inheritances, in which the surviving spouse has the opportunity to express his/her intentions. However, Japanese parents, contrary to predictions of the altruism model, appear not to bequeath more to economically disadvantaged children. JEL classification codes: D13, D31, D64

This paper reappraises Tachibanaki and Yokoyama (2008)-an empirical analysis indicating no apparent backward shifting of employer social insurance contributions-by modifying their empirical strategy. First, we control for a spurious positive correlation between wages and employers' contribution rates by trend variables. Second, we utilize a cross-sectional variation in the contribution rate of workers' compensation insurance. Third, we exclude two industries from our sample to remove sampling errors in wages.Our results indicate that the social insurance burden shifts back onto employees to some extent, contrary to Tachibanaki and Yokoyama (2008). Our finding is consistent with other existing studies.j ere_494 427..441 JEL Classification Numbers: H55, H22, J38.