Explaining movements in the labor share

Samuel Bentolila; Gilles Saint-Paul

doi:10.2202/1534-6005.1103

Explaining movements in the labor share

Samuel Bentolila, Gilles Saint-Paul

Economics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

In this paper we study the evolution of the labor share in the OECD. We show it is essentially related to the capital-output ratio; that this relationship is shifted by factors like the price of imported materials or capital-augmenting technological progress: and that discrepancies between the marginal product of labor and the real wage -due to, e.g., labor adjustment costs or union wage bargaining- cause departures from it. We also provide empirical evidence on the determinants of the labor share with panel data on 13 industries and 12 countries for 1972-93.

Original language	English (US)
Article number	9
Journal	Contributions to Macroeconomics
Volume	3
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.2202/1534-6005.1103
State	Published - 2003

Keywords

Capital-output ratio
Labor share

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Economics, Econometrics and Finance

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Explaining movements in the labor share

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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