Gilles Dufrénot, Mathilde Esposito, Eva Moreno-Galbis, Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics, pp. 206-242, 10/2025
Abstract
Low fertility rates, mortality outstripping the birth rate, aging and pop-ulation contraction characterize a new demographic transition (the so-called “fifth stage”). This chapter seeks to evaluate how this phenomenon has impacted the Japanese economic structure and overall productivity. We extend Autor and Dorn’s (2013) theoretical framework to introduce two key mechanisms that have been at play since the 2000s: (i) a growing complementarity between goods and services consumption, and (ii) the substitution of older workers engaged in routine tasks with technological capital. The model predicts an increasing concentration of low-skilled workers in the service sector, which should aggravate productivity gaps between industry and services. Using stochastic frontier models and EU-KLEMS data, we compute industry-by-industry TFP growth frontiers in order to check if theoretical predictions match with Japanese reality.
Keywords
Japan, Economic structure, Technological change, Productivity, Demographic transition