Wage share variations in France and Germany since 1970: what does really matter?

This paper refers to a few recent studies, which have focused on methodological issues related to the estimation of the wage share variations, to compare the evolutions in France and former West Germany since 1970. It is shown that the usual method overestimates the long run drop of wage share in both countries but that the magnitude and thus the contribution of different biases are quite different in France and Germany. However no bias can explain the sharp drop of wage share in Germany since 2001, which has to be analysed within the framework of the euro area.