Trade and the Labor Market

This book presents an integrated overview and evidence, taking Japan as an example, on how international trade, especially with developing countries, affects labor market in developed countries, which has been keenly debated among international and labor economists since the late 1980s. The unique point of this book is that it integrates international trade and labor market into the same framework. The analysis includes both theory and empirical study. It especially pays attention to wage inequality between skilled and unskilled labor represented by nonproduction and production workers, and college graduates and high-school graduates. The estimation method used is to analyze input-output tables containing 55 manufacturing industries during the period 1995-2005, and to measure factor content of trade using these tables.

Kojiro Sakurai is a professor of economics at Senshu University and visiting scholar of the Research Institute of Capital Formation, Development Bank of Japan. His main areas of research are labor economics, international economics and Japanese economy. Born in 1956, Prof. Sakurai received a Bachelor's degree in Economics from Hitotsubashi University in 1980, a Master's degree in Economics from Yale University in 1984, and a Doctor's degree in Economics from Hitotsubashi University in 2008. He was appointed Professor of Economics at Senshu University in 2007, after working for the Research Institute of Capital Formation, DBJ, as Chief Economist.