Re-measuring labor's share
Abstract
Measuring labor's share of an economy's aggregate income seems straightforward, at least in principle. Count up wage and salary income, along with the value of benefits provided to employees, and divide it by total income. However, one fundamental concept of labor's share in macroeconomic theory is not the amount of aggregate income paid out to labor. Rather, it is the share of aggregate production that is attributable to "raw" units of labor. Or, otherwise stated, it is the share of aggregate income that would have been paid to laborers if they had no accumulated stocks of human capital.1 This share corresponds to an aggregate production function parameter: the elasticity of output with respect to physical (i.e. non-augmented or raw) units of labor (Robert Solow, 1957). In this paper we estimate annual raw labor’s share for the US, 1949 to 1996.Download Info
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Paper provided by UNIVERSIDAD DEL ROSARIO in its series DOCUMENTOS DE TRABAJO with number 004674.Length: 19
Date of creation: 01 May 2008
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:col:000092:004674
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Related research
Keywords:Other versions of this item:
- Andrew T. Young & Hernando Zuleta, 2013. "Remeasuring labour's share," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 20(6), pages 549-553, April.
- NEP-ALL-2008-05-17 (All new papers)
- NEP-LAB-2008-05-17 (Labour Economics)
References
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Luciano BOGGIO & Vincenzo DALL’AGLIO & Marco MAGNANI, 2010.
"On Labour Shares in Recent Decades: A Survey,"
Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Sociali,
Vita e Pensiero, Pubblicazioni dell'Universita' Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, vol. 118(3), pages 283-333.
- Luciano Boggio & Vincenzo Dall'Aglio & Marco Magnani, 2009. "On Labour Shares in Recent Decades: A Survey," DISCE - Quaderni dell'Istituto di Teoria Economica e Metodi Quantitativi itemq0957, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
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