This paper studies the evolution of China's production and trade patterns during its integration into the global economy. We document and explain new facts concerning changes in production and exports at the industry and firm levels using microdata and a quantitative Ricardian and...

This paper uses millions of records from a cross-country and time series database of both publicly listed and private companies to disentangle the role of technological change, market power, and globalization in driving a fall in the labor share. Labor shares are measured at the enterprise level...

When explaining the declining labor income share in advanced economies, the macro literature finds that the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor is greater than one. However, the vast majority of micro-level estimates shows that capital and labor are complements (elasticity less...

The recent shift to remote work raised the amenity value of employment. As compensation adjusts to share the amenity-value gains with employers, wage-growth pressures moderate. We find empirical support for this mechanism in the wage-setting behavior of U.S. employers, and we develop novel...

The labor share is typically measured as compensation to labor relative to gross value added ("gross labor share"), in part because gross value added is more directly measured than net value added. Labor compensation relative to net value added ("net labor share") may be more important in some...

We study the importance of firm sorting for spatial inequality. If productive locations are able to attract the most productive firms, then firm sorting acts as an amplifier of spatial inequality. We develop a novel model of spatial firm sorting, in which heterogeneous firms first choose a...

We study capital-skill complementarity in a multi-sector framework featuring firm-specific, multi-factor production functions and allowing for firm-specific factor-price wedges. We characterize the elasticity of the skill premium to the price of capital equipment in terms of firm-level...

We study the productivity-pay relationship in the United States and Canada along two dimensions. The first is divergence: the degree to which the levels of productivity and pay have diverged. The second is delinkage: the degree to which incremental increases in the rate of productivity growth...

The level of productivity doubled in the U.S. nonfarm business sector between 1970 and 2006. Wages, or more accurately total compensation per hour, increased at approximately the same annual rate during that period if nominal compensation is adjusted for inflation in the same way as the nominal...

Many technological innovations replace workers with machines, but this capital-labor substitution need not reduce aggregate labor demand because it simultaneously induces four countervailing responses: own-industry output effects; cross-industry input-output effects; between-industry shifts; and...