In continental Europe, labour shares in national income have exhibited considerable variation since 1970. Empirical and theoretical research suggests that the evolution of labour markets and labour market imperfections can, in part, explain this phenomenon. The author analyzes the role of capital market imperfections in the determination of the distribution of national income, comparing European and Anglo-Saxon countries. She uses a simple general-equilibrium model to trace the effects of credit and labour market imperfections on factor shares. Simulations indicate that improvements in capital markets can explain lower labour shares. An increase in the degree of employee power results in higher labour shares. Regression results confirm the author's findings. Improvements in credit markets and decreasing employee bargaining power have contributed to shrinking labour shares, especially in Europe. Openness is a negative determinant of labour shares.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Bank of Canada in its series Discussion Papers with number
09-2.
Find related papers by JEL classification: C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory E25 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Aggregate Factor Income Distribution J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: