IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mes/jpneco/v11y1983i4p58-84.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Comparison of the Labor Market in Japan and the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Isao Obhashi

Abstract

It is now a commonplace to cite lifetime employment, seniority-related wages, and enterprise unions as three essential features of the Japanese labor market. This understanding can be traced to James G. Abegglen's book The Japanese Factory-Aspects of Its Social Organization, published in 1958 and widely accepted by the 1960s. At the time, these characteristics were considered to reflect the backwardness or archaism of Japan; today, they are regarded as the strength of the Japanese economy. Needless to say, this reevaluation was supported by the superior international competitiveness of Japanese businesses in such areas as automobiles and steel and by the resiliency of the Japanese economy as shown by its swift recovery from the oil shocks. However, despite the glamor that surrounded the debate on Japanese-style employment practices, there has never been an effort to test the above-stated interpretation by careful empirical analysis. Thus has a stereotype become what may be a myth.

Suggested Citation

  • Isao Obhashi, 1983. "A Comparison of the Labor Market in Japan and the United States," Japanese Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(4), pages 58-84.
    • Handle: RePEc:mes:jpneco:v:11:y:1983:i:4:p:58-84
    DOI: 10.2753/JES1097-203X110458
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2753/JES1097-203X110458
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2753/JES1097-203X110458?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mes:jpneco:v:11:y:1983:i:4:p:58-84. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/MJES19 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.