Wealth Accumulation and Enterpreneur-ship in Japanese Households

自20世纪80年代以来，日本的个体经营者一直在减少。本文利用1989年和1994年家庭支出调查的微观数据研究了家庭支出减少的原因。成为自雇人士有两个重要条件：一种是经验积累和风险态度强度的老龄化效应，即老龄化效应；另一种是资本市场的流动性约束，即财富效应：我们实证研究了这两种效应对1989 - 1994年个体就业率下降的影响。我们发现，年龄效应占其下降的不到40%，几乎20%可以用财富效应来解释。并试图找出个体经营家庭的收入积累事实，估计个体经营的收益函数。然后，为了控制样本选择偏差，我们使用Heckman估计模型对其进行估计。结果表明，家庭的年龄倾向于通过经验和知识的积累来增加收入。但1989 - 1994年，收入随老龄化的增长明显减弱，风险规避态度增强。可以确信，财富积累对收入的边际回报是正的，在个体经营者中，财富的收入差异一直在扩大。流动性紧张加剧，个体户收入分配状况恶化，创业和持续创业难度加大。这些发现表明，当前的日本经济正朝着凯恩斯过去对英国经济所担忧的“食利者”经济方向发展。

Self-employed workers have been decreasing in Japan since the 1980s. We research the reasons for the decrease using micro data of the Family Expenditure Survey 1989 and 1994. There are two important conditions for becoming self-employed ; one is the accumulation of experience and intensity of riskattitude by aging, that is called the aging effect, and the other is liquidity constraints in capital market, that is the wealth effect : We empirically examine how these two effects contributed to declining the self-employment rates from 1989 to 1994. We found as the results that the aging effect accounted for a little less than 40% of its decline and almost 20% could be explained by the wealth effect. And we also attempt to find the facts of income accumulation among self-employed households, estimating the earnings function of self-employment. Then, in order to control for sample selection bias, we estimate it using the Heckman's estimation model. The results show that the age of households tend to increase earnings through accumulation of experience and know-how. However, the income increase with aging was clearly weakened from 1989 to 1994, strengthening the risk-averse attitude. And it can be convinced that marginal return of wealth accumulation for earnings was positive, and the earning differentials by wealth have been growing among the self-employed. The liquidity constraint that has been getting tight has worsened the self-employed income distribution, so that it has becoming much more difficult to open business and continue to self-employment. These findings indicate that the current Japanese economy have been moving toward the "rentier" economy that John Maynard Keynes worried about the British economy in the past.