Sophia Seung - yoon Lee The Shift of Labour Market Risks in Deindustrializing Asian Economies : Taiwan , Japan and the Republic of Korea 2 / 2010

The transitions from a predominant manufacturing sector to a dominant service sector, from a male dominated labour market to an increase of female workers, and from a stable employment structure to a flexible one are the three most prominent characteristics of labour market changes in advanced economies. This paper has three objectives: i) to empirically examine labour market transitions in deindustrializing Asian economies, ii) to study the character of labour market risks and how these risks are shifting by gender, education level and by age in the transitional period, and lastly, iii) in an attempt to rethink the commonly accepted assumptions that deindustrialization and/or globalization are the main causes of new labour market risks, this paper proposes the possibility of institutional legacy as an important factor for such risk shifts. This study focuses on the labour market risks in the Republic of Korea, Japan and Taiwan. Three steps are taken in this inquiry. First, this study commences by empirically examining the three labour market changes mentioned above. Second, it challenges the idea of the emergence of „new risks‟, arguing instead for the concept of „risk shift‟: the feature of risk shifting to different demographic groups. Lastly, with the empirical evidence already used, it discusses whether deindustrialization and/or globalization are sufficient causes for risk shifts in deindustrializing Asian economies, proposing that institutional legacy may be an important factor in risk shift. (8,697 words) Sophia Seung-yoon Lee The Shift of Labour Market Risks in Deindustrializing Asian Economies: Taiwan, Japan and the Republic of Korea