Let me begin by thanking the organizers for inviting me to this conference. This year's theme, "Labor Markets in Transition," is highly relevant to Japan. Our labor market is indeed undergoing a significant transformation, but the direction and underlying causes are somewhat unique to our country. For many years after the burst of the asset price bubble in the early 1990s, the combination of near-zero inflation, economic stagnation, and structural policies aimed at stimulating labor supply masked the demographic pressures on labor market tightness. The large-scale monetary easing since 2013, together with ... (full story)