Kostiantyn Ovsiannikov from the University of Tsukuba will discuss how the pursuit of shareholder-value by management has affected labor policies at large enterprises listed in the Nikkei 400 index. He will focus on the issue of labor bifurcation, which refers to the division between regular and nonregular employees. The share of nonregular employees in Japan has been growing rapidly and is now close to 40% of all employees.

The research corroborates the positive correlation between total shareholder return and the share of nonregular workers in a firm. Moreover, it shows that foreign stockholding is not correlated with an increase in nonregular employment.

The presentation is based on a paper, which received the 2018 FFJ (Fondation France-Japon)/SASE Best Paper Award and which will soon be published in The Japanese Political Economy.

Speaker:
Kostiantyn Ovsiannikov, University of Tsukuba