The accumulation principle suggests that complementarity between capital and labor forces the labor income share to rise in the presence of capital accumulation. The CES model estimates using data from 20 Japanese industries between 1970 and 2012 explain the same outcome but with substitutable...

Globally, the share of income going to labor (the “labor income share”) is declining. However, this aggregate decline hides more than it reveals. While the labor income share has decreased for low-skilled workers, this has been concurrent with an increase for high-skilled workers....

We propose a theory-based adjustment to the labor income share to correct for the self-employment bias. Through a two-sector neoclassical framework with agriculture and non-agriculture, we derive the productivity-adjusted aggregate labor income share in terms of the agricultural productivity...

Micro-level studies provide insightful knowledge on the drivers of the labor income share. This paper introduces a novel firm-level dataset on the labor income share. Using the World Bank Enterprise Survey data, we put together an unbalanced panel comprising 146,666 firms from 139 countries and...

The constancy of the elasticity of factor substitution (σ) makes its role as a driver of the labor income share exogenous. The constant elasticity of substitution (CES) (Arrow et al., 1961) production function has predominantly been used to support this causal relationship. This paper argues...

The relationship between a declining labor income share and a falling relative price of capital requires capital and labor to be gross substitutes at the aggregate level (i.e., σ-Agg1). We argue that this restriction can be relaxed if we distinguish labor by skills and identify differential...

This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the role of trade and structural transformation as potential drivers of the labor income share. Using cross-country data, both at the national and sectoral level, we find that trade openness is negatively correlated with the labor income share. The...

Despite its long pedigree, studies on the role of the substitution elasticity between capital and labor mostly assume a homogeneous labor market. This paper extends this literature by considering a heterogeneous labor market with capital-skill complementarity. Technological advancement, global...

Despite steady growth of the literature on labor income share, empirical studies are mostly limited to country-level analyses. At the sectoral level, data on labor income share are available only for advanced countries. This paper overcomes this constraint and provides some preliminary outcomes...