Gene Grossman, Ezra Oberfield
After a century of stability, the labour share of national income began to decline around 2000 in the US and many other countries. This column reviews the growing literature examining the potential reasons for the decline of the labour share, which include (1) capital-biased technical change, (2) globalisation and the rise of China, (3) increasing industry concentration and market power, (4) unionisation, and (5) population growth. The column also discusses pitfalls associated with common empirical strategies in the literature and suggests that more work is needed to understand fundamental, rather than proximate, causes of the decline.
Πηγή: Voxeu