[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ctc/serie6/itemq0957.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On Labour Shares in Recent Decades: A Survey

Author

Listed:
  • Luciano Boggio

    (DISCE, Università Cattolica di Milano)

  • Vincenzo Dall'Aglio

    (Università di Parma)

  • Marco Magnani

    (Università di Parma)

Abstract
We survey the rich literature studying the behaviour of labor shares in recent decades. To explain their dynamics – the main feature being the decline of European and American shares starting in the 1980s – such literature considers models that use either neoclassical or Leontief-type production functions, with both perfectly competitive markets and monopolistic competition coupled by bargaining between firms and workers. These empirical studies in general have produced results that are scarcely robust. However, they suggest that technical change has a negative and significant impact on the labor share. Evidence for a negative effect of globalization variables is clearly brought out for developing countries, whilst for advanced countries, this effect finds less support. Also, they show that product and labor market regulation issues have mixed effects on the labor share. An alternative to the econometric explanation of labor share is given in the final section.

Suggested Citation

  • Luciano Boggio & Vincenzo Dall'Aglio & Marco Magnani, 2009. "On Labour Shares in Recent Decades: A Survey," DISCE - Quaderni dell'Istituto di Teoria Economica e Metodi Quantitativi itemq0957, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    • Handle: RePEc:ctc:serie6:itemq0957
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.unicatt.it/Istituti/TeoriaEconomica/Quaderni/itemq0957.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2009
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bentolila Samuel & Saint-Paul Gilles, 2003. "Explaining Movements in the Labor Share," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-33, October.
    2. Lawless, Martina & Whelan, Karl T., 2011. "Understanding the dynamics of labor shares and inflation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 121-136, June.
    3. Klump, Rainer & McAdam, Peter & Willman, Alpo, 2008. "Unwrapping some euro area growth puzzles: Factor substitution, productivity and unemployment," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 645-666, June.
    4. Dani Rodrik, 1999. "Democracies Pay Higher Wages," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 707-738.
    5. Olivier Blanchard & Francesco Giavazzi, 2003. "Macroeconomic Effects of Regulation and Deregulation in Goods and Labor Markets," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 879-907.
    6. Bruno Decreuse & Paul Maarek, 2015. "FDI and the Labor Share in Developing Countries : A Theory and Some Evidence," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 119-120, pages 289-319.
    7. Marc J. Melitz & Giancarlo I. P. Ottaviano, 2021. "Market Size, Trade, and Productivity," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Firms and Workers in a Globalized World Larger Markets, Tougher Competition, chapter 4, pages 87-108, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    8. Emilie Daudey & Cecilia Garcia-Penalosa, 2007. "The personal and the factor distributions of income in a cross-section of countries," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(5), pages 812-829.
    9. A. B. Atkinson, 2009. "Factor shares: the principal problem of political economy?," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 25(1), pages 3-16, Spring.
    10. Andreas Hornstein & Per Krusell & Giovanni L. Violante, 2007. "Technology—Policy Interaction in Frictional Labour-Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(4), pages 1089-1124.
    11. Boggio, Luciano, 2009. "Long-run effects of low-wage countries' growing competitiveness and exports of manufactures," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 38-49, March.
    12. Robert C. Feenstra & Gordon H. Hanson, 1995. "Foreign Investment, Outsourcing and Relative Wages," NBER Working Papers 5121, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Robert S. Chirinko, 2008. "ó: The Long And Short Of It," CESifo Working Paper Series 2234, CESifo.
    14. Gianmarco Ottaviano & Takatoshi Tabuchi & Jacques-François Thisse, 2021. "Agglomeration And Trade Revisited," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Firms and Workers in a Globalized World Larger Markets, Tougher Competition, chapter 3, pages 59-85, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    15. Guo, Jang-Ting & Lansing, Kevin J., 2009. "Capital-labor substitution and equilibrium indeterminacy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(12), pages 1991-2000, December.
    16. Mezzetti, Claudio & Dinopoulos, Elias, 1991. "Domestic unionization and import competition," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-2), pages 79-100, August.
    17. Stefano Federico & Gaetano Alfredo Minerva, 2008. "Outward FDI and Local Employment Growth in Italy," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 144(2), pages 295-324, July.
    18. Douglas Gollin, 2002. "Getting Income Shares Right," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(2), pages 458-474, April.
    19. Paul R. Krugman, 2008. "Trade and Wages, Reconsidered," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 39(1 (Spring), pages 103-154.
    20. Jones, Ronald W. & Peter Neary, J., 1984. "The positive theory of international trade," Handbook of International Economics, in: R. W. Jones & P. B. Kenen (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 1, pages 1-62, Elsevier.
    21. Daudey, Emilie & Decreuse, Bruno, 2006. "Higher education, employers’ monopsony power and the labour share in OECD countries," MPRA Paper 3631, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    22. Ozlem Onaran, 2004. "Life After Crisis For Labor And Capital in the Era of Neoliberal Globalization," Working Papers geewp43, Vienna University of Economics and Business Research Group: Growth and Employment in Europe: Sustainability and Competitiveness.
    23. Oliver J. Blanchard, 1997. "The Medium Run," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 28(2), pages 89-158.
    24. James Smith, 2008. "That elusive elasticity and the ubiquitous bias: is panel data a panacea?," Bank of England working papers 342, Bank of England.
    25. Esther Moral & Veronique Genre, 2007. "Labour share developments in the euro area," Economic Bulletin, Banco de España, issue JUL, pages 97-109, July.
    26. Luci Ellis & Kathryn Smith, 2010. "The Global Upward Trend in the Profit Share," Applied Economics Quarterly (formerly: Konjunkturpolitik), Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 56(3), pages 231-256.
    27. Ann Harrison, 2022. "Has Globalization Eroded Labor’s Share? Some Cross-Country Evidence," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Globalization, Firms, and Workers, chapter 5, pages 89-135, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    28. Lucia Foster & John C. Haltiwanger & C. J. Krizan, 2001. "Aggregate Productivity Growth: Lessons from Microeconomic Evidence," NBER Chapters, in: New Developments in Productivity Analysis, pages 303-372, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    29. Gene M. Grossman & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2008. "Trading Tasks: A Simple Theory of Offshoring," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 1978-1997, December.
    30. Arndt, Sven W., 1997. "Globalization and the open economy," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 71-79.
    31. Minsik Choi, 2001. "Threat Effect of Foreign Direct Investment on Labor Union Wage Premium," Working Papers wp27, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    32. Caballero, Ricardo J. & Hammour, Mohamad L., 1998. "Jobless growth: appropriability, factor substitution, and unemployment," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 51-94, June.
    33. Andrew T. Young & Hernando Zuleta, 2013. "Remeasuring labour's share," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(6), pages 549-553, April.
    34. Ghazala Azmat & Alan Manning & John Van Reenen, 2007. "Privatization, Entry Regulation and the Decline of Labor's Share of GDP: A Cross-Country Analysis of the Network Industries," CEP Discussion Papers dp0806, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    35. Young, Andrew T., 2010. "One of the things we know that ain't so: Is US labor's share relatively stable?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 90-102, March.
    36. Daron Acemoglu, 2003. "Labor- And Capital-Augmenting Technical Change," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(1), pages 1-37, March.
    37. Arjun Jayadev, 2007. "Capital account openness and the labour share of income," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 31(3), pages 423-443, May.
    38. Robert S. Chirinko & Steven M. Fazzari & Andrew P. Meyer, 2004. "That Elusive Elasticity: A Long-Panel Approach to Estimating the Capital-Labor Substitution Elasticity," CESifo Working Paper Series 1240, CESifo.
    39. Alain Serres & Stefano Scarpetta & Christine Maisonneuve, 2001. "Falling Wage Shares in Europe and the United States: How Important is Aggregation Bias?," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 28(4), pages 375-401, December.
    40. Smith, James, 2008. "That elusive elasticity and the ubiquitous bias: Is panel data a panacea?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 760-779, June.
    41. Nicola GIAMMARIOLI & Julian MESSINA & Thomas STEINBERGER & Chiara STROZZI, 2002. "European Labor Share Dynamics: An Institutional Perspective," Economics Working Papers ECO2002/13, European University Institute.
    42. Ms. Florence Jaumotte & Ms. Irina Tytell, 2007. "How Has The Globalization of Labor Affected the Labor Income Share in Advanced Countries?," IMF Working Papers 2007/298, International Monetary Fund.
    43. Alwyn Young, 1995. "The Tyranny of Numbers: Confronting the Statistical Realities of the East Asian Growth Experience," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(3), pages 641-680.
    44. Gerald Epstein & Arjun Jayadev, 2007. "The Correlates of Rentier Returns in OECD Countries," Working Papers wp123, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    45. Blanchard, Olivier, 1998. "Revisiting European Unemployment : Unemployment, Capital Accumulation and Factor Prices," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number GLS28.
    46. repec:bla:germec:v:4:y:2003:i:1:p:89-120:a is not listed on IDEAS
    47. Wilhelm Kohler, 2003. "The Distributional Effects of International Fragmentation," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 4(1), pages 89-120, February.
    48. Francisco Rodríguez & Daniel Ortega, 2006. "Are capital shares higher in poor countries? Evidence from Industrial Surveys," Wesleyan Economics Working Papers 2006-023, Wesleyan University, Department of Economics.
    49. Paul Gomme & Peter Rupert, 2004. "Measuring labors share of income," Policy Discussion Papers, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue Nov.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Growiec, Jakub & McAdam, Peter & Mućk, Jakub, 2018. "Endogenous labor share cycles: Theory and evidence," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 74-93.
    2. Carlo V. Fiorio & Simon Mohun & Roberto Veneziani, 2013. "Social Democracy and Distributive Conflict in the UK, 1950-2010," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2013-06, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    3. Chi, Wei & Qian, Xiaoye, 2013. "Regional disparity of labor's share in China: Evidence and explanation," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 277-293.
    4. Taining Wang & Jinjing Tian, 2020. "Recasting the trade impact on labor share: a fixed-effect semiparametric estimation study," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 58(5), pages 2465-2511, May.
    5. Enrico Bellino, 2012. "Pasinetti on Ricardo," DISCE - Quaderni dell'Istituto di Teoria Economica e Metodi Quantitativi itemq1258, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    6. Stefano Colombo & Luigi Filippini, 2012. "Product innovation and logistic optimization in a novel urban-type model," DISCE - Quaderni dell'Istituto di Teoria Economica e Metodi Quantitativi itemq1259, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    7. Parisi, Maria Laura, 2017. "Labor market rigidity, social policies and the labor share: Empirical evidence before and after the big crisis," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 492-512.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. M. Magnani, 2009. "Labor share dynamics: a survey of the theory," Economics Department Working Papers 2009-EP07, Department of Economics, Parma University (Italy).
    2. repec:pra:mprapa:43050 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Mirella Damiani & Fabrizio Pompei & Andrea Ricci, 2012. "Labour Shares and Employment Protection in European Economies," Quaderni del Dipartimento di Economia, Finanza e Statistica 111/2012, Università di Perugia, Dipartimento Economia.
    4. Elsa Orgiazzi & Paul Maarek, 2010. "Which factor bears the cost of currency crises?," 2010 Meeting Papers 810, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. Guerriero, Marta & Sen, Kunal, 2012. "What Determines the Share of Labour in National Income? A Cross-Country Analysis," IZA Discussion Papers 6643, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Paul Maarek & Elsa Orgiazzi, 2013. "Currency Crises and the Labour Share," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 80(319), pages 566-588, July.
    7. Raihan, Selim, 2021. "Functional Income Distribution and Inequality in the Asia-Pacific Countries," MPRA Paper 110469, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Chi, Wei & Qian, Xiaoye, 2013. "Regional disparity of labor's share in China: Evidence and explanation," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 277-293.
    9. Michael Siegenthaler & Tobias Stucki, 2014. "Dividing the Pie: The Determinants of Labor's Share of Income on the Firm Level," KOF Working papers 14-352, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    10. Saumik Paul & Yoko Oishi, 2018. "A Primer on the Drivers of Labor Income Share," Working Papers id:12948, eSocialSciences.
    11. Maarek, Paul, 2012. "Labor share, informal sector and development," MPRA Paper 38756, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. John Hutchinson & Damiaan Persyn, 2012. "Globalisation, concentration and footloose firms: in search of the main cause of the declining labour share," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 148(1), pages 17-43, April.
    13. Igor Fedotenkov, 2016. "Labour Shares, Fertility and Longevity in an OLG model," Bank of Lithuania Working Paper Series 28, Bank of Lithuania.
    14. Corbellini, Aldo & Magnani, Marco & Morelli, Gianluca, 2021. "Labor market analysis through transformations and robust multivariate models," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    15. Mai, Nhat Chi, 2018. "Three Essays On Financial Integration And Trade Liberalization," OSF Preprints hfrdq, Center for Open Science.
    16. Jo Michell, 2014. "Factors generating and transmitting the financial crisis; Functional distribution of income," Working papers wpaper41, Financialisation, Economy, Society & Sustainable Development (FESSUD) Project.
    17. Doan, Ha Thi Thanh & Wan, Guanghua, 2017. "Globalization and the Labor Share in National Income," ADBI Working Papers 639, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    18. D., Ivan, 2017. "Stability of the labour shares: evidence from OECD economies," MPRA Paper 79822, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Kyoji Fukao & Cristiano Perugini, 2021. "The Long‐Run Dynamics of the Labor Share in Japan," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 67(2), pages 445-480, June.
    20. Remi Bazillier & Boris Najman, 2017. "Labour and Financial Crises: Is Labour Paying the Price of the Crisis?," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 59(1), pages 55-76, March.
    21. Paul Maarek & Elsa Orgiazzi, 2020. "Development and the Labor Share," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 34(1), pages 232-257.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Factor Shares; Functional Income Distribution;

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E25 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Aggregate Factor Income Distribution

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ctc:serie6:itemq0957. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gianluca Femminis (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dscatit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.