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The Productivity Slowdown and the Declining Labor Share: A Neoclassical Exploration

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Listed:
  • Gene M. Grossman
  • Elhanan Helpman
  • Ezra Oberfield
  • Thomas Sampson
Abstract
We explore the possibility that a global productivity slowdown is responsible for the widespread decline in the labor share of national income. In a neoclassical growth model with endogenous human capital accumulation a la Ben Porath (1967) and capital-skill complementarity a la Grossman et al. (2017), the steady-state labor share is positively correlated with the rates of capital-augmenting and labor-augmenting technological progress. We calibrate the key parameters describing the balanced growth path to U.S. data for the early postwar period and find that a one percentage point slowdown in the growth rate of per capita income can account for between one half and all of the observed decline in the U.S. labor share.

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  • Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman & Ezra Oberfield & Thomas Sampson, 2017. "The Productivity Slowdown and the Declining Labor Share: A Neoclassical Exploration," NBER Working Papers 23853, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23853
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E13 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Neoclassical
    • E25 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Aggregate Factor Income Distribution
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • O41 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - One, Two, and Multisector Growth Models

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