Social innovation
Work, Mental health, Causal testing

How can we increase employment rates?
How can we raise work incentives?
Osaka School of International Public Policy
Professor Miki Kohara
https://researchmap.jp/mkohara

Abstract
What are the labor policies and socioeconomic environment toboost the labor supply of the unemployed and the productivity ofthe employed? My study tries to answer such a question basedon the data analyses for Japan. I have confirmed that some of thegovernment job-supporting policies succeed to inspire the youth
unemployed to seek for jobs, and that firm’s information disclosure
improves job-matching between firms and the workers. I havealso shown that work environment deteriorates not only workers’
work-incentives, but also workers’ health conditions. As a related
topic but from a different point of view on female labor supply, I
have shown that the Japanese married women flexibly change theirlabor supply so that they can buffer negative shocks to their family
members.

Social innovation▍ Background & Results
Individuals have their own acceptable levels of wage to work.
This acceptable level is called the reservation wage which canbe affected by the amount of non-labor income such as financial
supports by the government and the unemployment benefits. It isalso affected by household economic conditions and household
requirement such as household chores. Social norms and socioeconomic environments also affect the work incentives for the employed as well as for the unemployed. My research explores what
affects job-seeking behaviors, work-continuities, productivities, andworking time allocations, applying unique Japanese characteristics
to empirical analyses with individual and household dataset.
The uniqueness of my study lies in its consideration of the effects of society and culture around the workers themselves. The
study also tries to utilize the most appropriate methods and data
for analyses, conducting the original experiments and surveys
if necessary. My studies have used, for example, the household
datasets containing the detailed information within and across families, administrative data on the unemployed, and the original surveys/experiments conducted at existing firms and institutions. The
choice of data and methods is important to reduce biases driven
from unobserved sample characteristics in statistical analyses, andavoid misleading policy implications. The results have shown thatworkers are indeed affected by the other family members’ behaviors and society, socioeconomic environments and labor market
policies, more seriously than we have expected. The results havealso shown that not only work-incentives but also health-conditions
are important determinants of individuals’ labor decisions.

▍ Significance of the research and Future perspective
My research clarifies what affects labor supply of various typesof individuals in different periods of time all over Japan. The targetsof my research are especially the youth, who do not have sufficient
skills and experiences, and the married women, who are often
discouraged to work for family concerns. Those labor are not suf-

ficiently used for production, and do not have enough bargaining
power in the labor market. I would like to develop my research
to find effective policies to stimulate work incentives, utilizing therandomized experiments at educational institutions, social experiments on Japan’s unique changes in policy and socioeconomicenvironments.

AB

A: Survey at ASEAN Career Fair in Singapore
B: Job-match experiments at the employment support office in Osaka
Figure 1. Original surveys and experiments at actual workplaces
For a better policy evaluation, I try to conduct the original surveys and experiments at workplaces existing in the real world.

Figure 2. The depression-reduction effect of a job-finding program for the youth
job-seekers
The youth job-finding program can raise their job-matching, and at the same time,
it can lower the cases of depression symptoms among them. This depression-alleviating effect is especially big when the youth have the same-gender peers inthe program.

P a t e n t
Tr e a t i s e

Ishikawa, Yumi; Kohara, Miki; Nushimoto, Aya. Job Stress and Mental Health among Social Workers: Evidence from a Field Experiment at a Public
Employment Support Institution in Japan. The Japanese Economic Review. 2022, 73; 123–146. doi: 10.1007/s42973-021-00100-z
Kohara, Miki; Maity, Bipasha. The Impact of Work-Life Balance Policies on the Time Allocation and Fertility Preference of Japanese Women. Journal of theJapanese and International Economies. 2021; 60(1); 101134. doi: 10.1016/j.jjie.2021.101134

URLK e y w o r d labor supply, job matching, active labor market policies, work environment, family time allocation