This paper investigates labor and profit share trends across Advanced Economies. It shows that Real Estate is the primary driver of declining labor shares outside the US. Excluding Real Estate, non-US labor and profit shares have remained relatively stable since the 1970s. By contrast, the US...

This paper studies the cyclical pattern of ex post markups in the banking system using balance-sheet data for a large set of countries. Markups are strongly countercyclical even after controlling for financial development, banking concentration, operational costs, inflation, and simultaneity or...