Government offices were closed on Saturdays every other week beginning in 1989, and since 1992 have been closed every Saturday. Financial institutions have been closed on Saturdays since 1989. A temporary law was introduced in 1992 to bring about a further reduction in hours worked. In addition, the 1998 revision of the Labor Standards Law added one more day to paid vacation allowance (Summary from Hayashi and Prescott 2002). It is interesting to note that some German employers and unions are moving towards increasing standard work hours to stay competitive, but the typical German works far fewer hours and days than a typical Japanese-- indeed, under the standard definition of part-time work (less than 35 hours per week), a large part of Germany's "full-time labor force is actually "part-time"!.