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Eclipse of Rent-Sharing: The Effects of Managers' Business Education on Wages and the Labor Share in the US and Denmark

Author

Listed:
  • Daron Acemoglu
  • Alex Xi He
  • Daniel le Maire
Abstract
This paper provides evidence from the US and Denmark that managers with a business degree (�business managers") reduce their employees' wages. Within five years of the appointment of a business manager, wages decline by 6% and the labor share by 5 percentage points in the US, and by 3% and 3 percentage points in Denmark. Firms appointing business managers are not on differential trends and do not enjoy higher output, investment, or employment growth thereafter. Using manager retirements and deaths and an IV strategy based on the diffusion of the practice of appointing business managers within industry, region and size quartile cells, we provide additional evidence that these are causal effects. We establish that the proximate cause of these (relative) wage effects are changes in rent-sharing practices following the appointment of business managers. Exploiting exogenous export demand shocks, we show that non-business managers share profits with their workers, whereas business managers do not. But consistent with our first set of results, these business managers show no greater ability to increase sales or profits in response to exporting opportunities. Finally, we use the influence of role models on college major choice to instrument for the decision to enroll in a business degree in Denmark and show that our estimates correspond to causal effects of practices and values acquired in business education--rather than the differential selection into business education of individuals unlikely to share rents with workers.

Suggested Citation

  • Daron Acemoglu & Alex Xi He & Daniel le Maire, 2022. "Eclipse of Rent-Sharing: The Effects of Managers' Business Education on Wages and the Labor Share in the US and Denmark," Working Papers 22-58, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    • Handle: RePEc:cen:wpaper:22-58
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. IKEUCHI Kenta & FUKAO Kyoji & Cristiano PERUGINI & Fabrizio POMPEI, 2023. "Which Employers Share Rents? A firm-level analysis for Japan," Discussion papers 23048, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    2. Maria Celeste Gomez & Maria Enrica Virgillito, 2022. "Wages and productivity in Argentinian manufacturing. A structuralist and distributional firm-level analysis," LEM Papers Series 2022/37, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    3. Mertens, Matthias, 2023. "Labor Market Power and Between-Firm Wage (In)Equality," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    4. Garcia-Lazaro, Aida & Pearce, Nick, 2023. "Intangible capital, the labour share and national ‘growth regimes’," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 674-695.
    5. Mertens, Matthias & Müller, Steffen & Neuschäffer, Georg, 2022. "Identifying rent-sharing using firms' energy input mix," IWH Discussion Papers 19/2022, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    6. Laura A Harvey & James Rockey, 2020. "The declining fortunes of (most) American workers," University of East Anglia School of Economics Working Paper Series 2020-04, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    7. Juan Jacobo, 2023. "There is power in general equilibrium," Papers 2309.00909, arXiv.org.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    business education; labor share; management; rent sharing; wages;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J53 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Labor-Management Relations; Industrial Jurisprudence
    • M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects
    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General

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