This volume, the fourth to result from a remarkably productive collaboration between the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Japan Center for Economic Research, presents a selection of thirteen high-caliber papers addressing issues in the employment practices, labor markets, and health, benefit, and pension policies of the United States an...

Shinji Ogura\'s insightful examination of the banking structure of developing Japan shows how Japanese banks became embroiled in the recent financial crisis. He demonstrates that the behavior of banks heading commercial groups was crucial to the development of the economic system....

The population base in both the United States and Japan is growing older and, as those populations age, they provoke heretofore unexamined economic consequences....