Does the Artificial Intelligence Help the Japanese Labor Markets?

Tuesday, May 1, 2018
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
(Pacific)
Philippines Conference Room
Encina Hall, Third Floor, Central, C330
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305
Speaker: 
  • Ryo Kambayashi, Professor, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University
The event is jointly sponsored by the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.
 
 
Since Frey and Osborne showed that 47% of US job would be substituted by AI, the penetration of AI into labor markets has been discussed in every country. In Japan, Benjamin David estimates 55% of jobs will vanish by the introduction of AI. However, these estimates are based only on the technological upper bound. We have to condifer of the economic mechanism behind it, especially the specificity of Japanese labor markets. In this seminar, I will summrize the characteristics of Japanese labor markets from the view point of task distribution, which reflects the technological aspect of them. Then, comparing with US data, I will discuss the role of economic institutions/circumstances and the future direction.
 
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Ryo Kambayashi is a Professor at Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University in Japan.  His field of research include labor economics, Japanese economy, economic history, and law and economics.  Based on the methodology of standard labor economics, Kambayashi's research interest is centered on the empirical investigations on the economic mechanism of current Japanese labor markets. Through several papers on wage and employment, he has found that the current transition of Japanese labor markets since 1990s has two aspects; that is, the changing part where so called non-standard workers have rapidly increased and the unchanged part where so called Japanese Employment System remains firmly. This disparity in labor markets does not come from the legal assignment surrounding the labor markets but from a spontaneous evolution, just because the Japanese Labor Law has strongly respected the mutual agreement between workers and employer which can officially create exemptions from legal regulations. Then, I am expanding my research agenda into the associations of labor markets with other parts of Japanese economy, such as trade, productivity, self-employment, to understand the whole of Japanese society. I am also gradually expanding the research into historical developments of institutions to find the evidence of spontaneous evolution of labor market institutions, e.g. the network of public employment agency was constructed by absorbing those of private agencies.  Kambayashi holds a PhD, an MA, and a BA in economics, all from University of Tokyo.