Measuring Factor Income Shares at the Sectoral Level

Many applications in economics use multi-sector versions of the growth model. In this paper, we measure the income shares of capital and labor at the sectoral level for the U.S. economy. We also decompose the capital shares into the income shares of land, structures, and equipment. We find that the capital shares differ across sectors. For example, the capital share of agriculture is more than two times that of construction and more than 50% larger than that of the aggregate economy. Moreover, agriculture has by far the largest land share, which mostly explains why it has the largest capital share. Our numbers can directly be used to calibrate standard multi-sector models. Alternatively, if one wants to abstract from differences in sector capital shares, our numbers can be used to establish that this is not crucial for the results.