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...

The movement of workers from the farm sector to a more productive nonfarm sector has failed to generate significant gains in labor productivity in recent decades in many developing countries. This paper offers a new perspective on the barriers to growth-enhancing structural transformation,...

This paper examines the drivers of the long-run structural transformation in Japan. We use a dynamic input-output framework that decomposes the reallocation of the total output across sectors into two components: the Engel effect (demand side) and the Baumol effect (supply side). To perform this...

The movement of workers from the farm sector to a more productive nonfarm sector has failed to generate significant gains in labor productivity in recent decades in many developing countries. This paper offers a new perspective into the barriers to growth-enhancing structural transformation,...

We show that σ-convergence in regional productivity growth can be approximated by σ-convergence in sectoral productivity growth and σ-convergence in structural transformation-led productivity growth. Applying this framework to Japanese prefecture-level data from 1874 to 2008, we find support...