Presentation by Reiko Suzuki at the NERO meeting on the political economy of structural policy reform on 12 June 2006.
More and more people are supporting the notion that competition in the Japanese economy has become fiercer due to economic structural reforms and that this has led to inequality in income. In this paper, we provide a brief summary of the structural reform measures that have taken place with the objective of enhancing market competition and increasing efficiency thus far. Then, we consider how "unequal" Japan has actually become, and finally try to understand how much of a role the reforms played in this widening inequality.
Long abstract
