A study on women's work, labor market institutions, and income distribution

1.理论分析表明，所谓的“100万日元上限”，即日本已婚女性从事兼职工作，收入不超过103万日元的倾向，具有推迟退休的影响。这一上限使得将年收入限制在103万日元以下变得合理，这样做会减少终身收入；为了部分弥补终身收入的减少，那些面临上限的人有动机工作更多年。此外，还推导了动态劳动力供给模型中上限福利成本的度量，表明动态福利成本一般不同于静态劳动力供给模型中的福利成本。这项研究的独特之处在于，它是少数几个考察非连续预算设置下的劳动力供应动态优化的研究之一。实证分析表明，日本兼职/全职工资差距拉大的驱动力之一是女性全职劳动力的教育升级和老龄化。在日本，女性在劳动力市场的参与度存在很大的地区差异。在使用日本数据估计劳动力供给函数时，考虑地区因素的方式对参数估计有显著影响。实证分析表明，在日本，妻子的劳动收入对缩小家庭收入不平等的影响不大。

1. From a theoretical analysis, it is shown that the so-called "1 million yen ceiling," which refers to the tendency of married women in Japan who work part time to limit their earnings to no more than 1.03 million yen, has an impact to delay retirement. The ceiling makes it rational to restrain annual earnings below 1.03 million yen, and doing so reduces lifetime earnings; in order to partially compensate for the reduced lifetime earnings, those who face the ceiling have incentives to work more years. In addition, the measure of welfare cost of the ceiling in a dynamic labor supply model is derived to show that the dynamic welfare cost generally differs from that in a static labor supply model. This research is unique in that it is one of the few studies that examine the dynamic optimization of labor supply under a discontinuous budget set.2. From an empirical analysis, it is shown that one of the driving forces for the widening part-time/full-time wage gap in Japan is the educational upgrading and aging of the female full-time workforce.3. In Japan, there are large regional differences in women's participation in the labor market. In estimating a labor supply function using Japanese data, the way to account for regional factors affects the parameter estimates significantly.4. From an empirical analysis, it is shown that wives' labor earnings have a modest impact to reduce household earnings inequality in Japan.