Since the 1980s, capitalist countries have driven globalization. By direct investments of the USA, Japan, etc., the economies of East Asian countries, especially China, have expanded. Among these countries, the division of labor in manufacturing processes has been promoted, and the organization of economic reproduction and circulation has been established. As a pivot of the organization, "the triple trade" was formed, with Japan and Asian NIEs exporting intermediate goods (processed goods and parts) to China and ASEAN countries, while China and ASEAN countries manufactured final goods (consumption goods and capital goods) out of intermediate goods and exported the final products to the USA and EU. Since the world financial crisis of 2008, East Asian economies, with China as a leader, helped the world economy to recover from the depression. However, due to worsening overproduction in its heavy industry, China could no longer play a role as a promoter of the world economy. Therefore, the world economy has fallen into a long-term depression. Since the financial crisis, income inequality has magnified worldwide, because of the increase in financial income of wealthy people, and the increase in the number of low-paid irregular workers. This weakens private consumption and prolongs the depression.

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Japan's economic growth was due to exports and capital investment. Japan has increased its exports to the United States, which has increased its domestic capital investment as well as the employment and wages. To increase exports, it is necessary to produce high quality products at low cost. Large manufacturing companies were able to reduce the production cost, using low-wage workers, such as subcontractors, young women, temporary workers and part-time workers. Due to the Plaza Accord in 1985 and the intensification of Japan-US trade friction, Japanese companies increased overseas production. Initially, the increase in overseas production appeared as the growth of exports of capital goods and key components from Japan. As the overseas production is directed to local consumption and detour exports to the United States, the impact on domestic production in Japan was limited. However, the number of employees and companies in the domestic manufacturing industry has decreased. Both the domestic shipments of manufacturing industry and added value have been reduced in Japan, while the domestic capital investment became stagnant. On the other hand, employment and overseas capital investment by Japanese companies has increased. As a result, overseas revenue of Japanese companies is increasing. In this sense, manufacturing industry in Japan has been hollowing out. The accumulation and growth structure of the post-war Japanese economy that depended on exports and capital investment in the manufacturing industry is on the verge of crisis. Crisis in the manufacturing industry is not only caused by the hollowing out of industry. Rather importantly, the competitiveness of Japan's manufacturing industry has decreased due to the ICT revolution. Since the formation of a lifetime employment system and seniority-based wages to target the regular male production workers of large companies during the high-growth period, production workers and technicians were in cooperation and coordination. However, because of the instability of the lifetime employment system and seniority-based wages, as well as the widening gap between regular and non-regular workers, Japanese manufacturing strength has weakened. In terms of both capital and labor, the accumulation and growth structure of the post-war Japanese economy has fallen into crisis.

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Social movement unionism (SMU) is a concept of unionism that commits to fighting for broad social and political issues, such as social justice, human rights, and so on, instead of limiting its role to bargaining for the economic interests of existing union members. Though among developed countries the United States is particularly known as a country where SMU is vigorous, recently social movement unionism is also growing in Japan as an important concept for the revitalization of the labor union movement. However, this unionism is regarded as an immature phenomenon in this country and theories, tactics and strategies of SMU should be imported from the US and other countries by a considerable number of researchers and union activists in Japan. In other words, famous old Japanese leftist unions (All Japan Congress of Industrial Unions (CIU/Sanbetsu Kaigi), General Council of Trade Unions of Japan (Sohyo) etc.) are not recognized as organizations committing to SMU. This view is supported by many researchers for two reasons: First, the main force of CIU and Sohyo unionism was essentially exclusive male workers who were interested mainly in acquiring corporation memberships. Second, CIU and Sohyo unionism should be defined as political unionism but not as SMU. However, both ideas are incorrect. The former view, which is based on essentialism and disregards discourse on movements, fails to grasp the 'social' character of those Japanese leftist unions. The latter view provides few reasons to distinguish between 'social' and 'political' unionisms. Therefore, we should consider the historical leftist labor unionism in Japan, such as that involving CIU, Sohyo and so on, as a fertile tradition of SMU in Japan. Furthermore, exhuming the tradition, studying it with critical eyes and trying to inherit its best elements are the keys to making a new history of SMU in Japan and revitalizing labor unionism in Japan.

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This paper offers a description of how economic development in Japan was accomplished so quickly. The industrial production index (based on GDP) in five advanced countries shows the rapid economic growth of Japan after World War II. The economy grew about eightfold in the 25 years from 1955 to 1980, which was as much as 2.5 times the economic growth of the United States, Germany, and France, and 1.6 times that of Britain. The speed of economic growth of Japan was phenomenal. This paper discusses the issue of this speed. How was Japan able to increase its productive force rapidly and become an industrialized nation so quickly? The speed shows the differences of structure in various economies, which will be described from the following two perspectives: The first perspective is the world-historic condition, i.e. the Cold War structure, or the U.S. Cold War system vs. the U.S.S.R Cold War system. The second perspective is Japanese domestic conditions, which are broken down under three headings: (1) Capital (funds; machine or technology); (2) Labor (person); (3) Land ownership (agriculture and farmers). From these three conditions, the author defines the Japanese Capitalism structure after WWII as " Exogenous Reproduction Structure." This paper discusses "land ownership." There are three types of land ownership: agricultural land, land for housing, and land for enterprise. Japan accomplished its rapid economic growth by converting the land ownership into capital. Originally, land was not a value-thing, but Japan created the capital by putting a price on the land. It has become the fictitious capital. The stagnation of the Japanese economy is not a problem of business cycles (prosperity-depression), but rather a problem of structure, which appeared as marginal villages (depopulated villages and towns with most inhabitants being senior citizens) in rural and city communities. The Japanese economy has shrunk. The long-lasting sluggish economy is called the "Lost Two Decades." This is the state of the present Japan.

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After the 1980s, Spanish economy experienced higher unemployment rate than the USA and the other Western European countries. Mainstream economists have explored its causes from the neo-classical point of view, and pointed out the institutional rigidities of Spanish labour market. However there are little statistical evidence in their ideas. Moreover little research has explicitly examined the effects of institutional changes caused by such reforms. So, the aim of this paper consists in verifying the economic effects of Spanish labour market reforms from the view point of institutional change. This paper consists of four sections. After the introductory section, the second section overviews the Spanish labour market reforms after 1984 and reviews any existing researches carried out about this issue. The third section evaluates the economic effects of labour market reforms on unemployment rates. In order to estimate these effects, we evaluate the Okun's law with policy dummy variables, with the help of the ordinary least squares (OLS) method. Doing so, the effects of labour market reforms on the demand side and/or on the supply side are distinguished. And the final concluding section states fact findings. As a result, we derive from the discussion in section 2 the fact that Spanish government carried out neo-liberal labour-cost-cutting policies, of which targets were the high unemployment rate groups, i.e. young, females, in order to promote their employability and labour market flexibility. From the discussion in section 3, we obtain three results. Firstly, the reform in 1984 reduced unemployment rate through demand side. Secondly, the reform in 1994 had smaller effect than reform in 1984. Finally, the reforms in 1997 and 2001 significantly reduced unemployment rate through demand and supply factors. In addition we identify the effects of the reforms, differentiated by time lags, age and gender groups. These findings suggest that the reforms in 1984, 1997 and 2001 significantly reduce Spanish unemployment rate, but this, by enhancing flexibility in employment adjustment of firms, and then, increasing temporary and precarious employment.

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Consistent with the rapid increase in the number of low-wage, non-regular workers in unstable employment situations, regular workers are being forced to work longer hours. The amount of work and responsibility of regular workers who do not lose their job has been increased by replacing regular employment with non-regular employment. It is the reason for the long working hours of regular workers. The revision of the Worker Dispatch Law in Japan is likely to be enacted soon; thus, there is a concern that the number of non-regular workers will further increase and the working hours of regular workers will be extended. This study examines the impact that longer working hours, caused by the reduction in regular workers, has on the macro economy. We focus on the elasticity of working hours with respect to regular employment-capital ratio. Depending on whether the elasticity exceeds a certain level or not, the impact on the economic growth rate can be been confirmed. If the elasticity exceeds a certain level by the reduction of regular employment, the capital utilization will increase in the short run. In that case, the economic growth rate will increase in the long run. Even when regular employment decreases temporarily, if the economy grows, regular employment may increase in the long-term. Then total employment (both non-regular and regular) will also increase. However, if the capital utilization decreases due to the extension of working hours, it will cause a decrease in the economic growth rate. Furthermore, if the capital utilization significantly decreases, a serious situation might occur, where non-regular employment also decreases.

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Since the 1980s, decline in wage share and increase in dividends or profits has become a global tendency, denoting significant changes in the functional income distributions between capital and labour. Employing macro-level analysis, some empirical studies reveal that such changes are caused by institutional changes, such as financialisation, that have occurred in the recent decades; however, few studies conduct micro-level analysis on functional income distributions. One of the aspects that would explain the recent changes in financial income distributions is the workers' and investors' perceptions of distributive justice. This can be examined by determining the respective 'fair' shares of workers and investors, who contribute to the production processes in different ways. In this paper, we perform economic experiments in laboratory involving the investment, production, and distribution stages and examined the fairness ideals in functional income distributions. All participants are pair-matched to form two-player teams, each comprising a worker and an investor. Once the investor completes the investment stage and the worker completes the production stage, each of them is required to present a proposal to divide the team earnings. The experiment comprises two treatments: (a) with-labour treatment, in which investors are required to work to earn investment funds and (b) without-labour treatment, in which investment funds are given to investors as endowments. Each participant's distribution proposal is classified under three fairness ideals-selfish (take-all), income-based egalitarian, and radical egalitarian-and we examined the factors significant for the participants' distributive justice perceptions. While an income-based egalitarian shares only the team earnings, a radical egalitarian shares not only the team earnings but also the rest of investment funds. Our findings are threefold: First, the labour theory of property seems to have a significant impact on the fairness ideals of the working participants: in the with-investor's labour treatment, both investors and workers tend to be egalitarian, whereas in the without-investor's labour treatment, workers tend to be selfish. Second, in the with-labour treatment, investors have significant tendencies to commit to income-based egalitarian proposals, whereas workers have significant tendencies to adhere to radical egalitarian proposals. These tendencies may arise from the self-serving bias maintained by both workers and investors. Third, in the without-labour treatment, both selfish investors and radical egalitarian investors increase. The increase in selfish investors can be explained by the lack of their labour experience resulting in low capability of valuing others' labour processes. Implications of our findings are twofold: First, the difference between income-based egalitarian and radical egalitarian distributions does not seem significant for finding a compromise-the worker and the investor to agree upon equal fair share; however, when investors' capital is not based on their own labour, the discrepancy between the distribution of workers and investors seems to be large. Second, our experimental results partly explain recent declines in labour wage rates through institutional changes. Financialisation tends to increase foreign and individual shareholders' ratios instead of that of domestic financial and non-financial corporations. As the former investors have less labour experience than the latter, they tend to adhere to more selfish distributions. Thus, from the micro-economic viewpoint, we understand that financialisation contributes to decreasing wage share.

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