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Labour and Financial Crises: Is Labour Paying the Price of the Crisis?

Author

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  • Remi Bazillier

    (Univ. Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
    Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne (CES, UMR CNRS 8174))

  • Boris Najman

    (Université Paris-Est, ERUDITE, TEPP)

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between the labour share and financial crises. While Diwan (2001) or Maarek et al. (2013) focused on the currency crisis, we propose to see if their analyses can be extended to the banking crisis and how it can influence the relative bargaining power of labour and capital within firms. To this end, we use international panel data of the share of labour in GDP. We confirm the existence of a negative trend for the labour share, which is largely explained by financial crises. However, the results differ for currency and banking crises. Currency crises affect the labour share negatively, while banking crises primarily affect capital income, at least during the year of the crisis. In the three years following a currency crisis, the labour share tends to be reduced by around 2% per year on average.

Suggested Citation

  • Remi Bazillier & Boris Najman, 2017. "Labour and Financial Crises: Is Labour Paying the Price of the Crisis?," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 59(1), pages 55-76, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:compes:v:59:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1057_s41294-016-0015-z
    DOI: 10.1057/s41294-016-0015-z
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    Cited by:

    1. Rémi Bazillier & Jérôme Hericourt, 2017. "The Circular Relationship Between Inequality, Leverage, And Financial Crises," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 463-496, April.
    2. Herradi, Mehdi El & Leroy, Aurélien, 2022. "The rich, poor, and middle class: Banking crises and income distribution," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    3. Paul Maarek & Elsa Orgiazzi, 2020. "Development and the Labor Share," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 34(1), pages 232-257.
    4. Omar Osman, 2021. "Income Inequality and Financial Disturbances: Does Income Inequality Engender Financial Crises?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 157(2), pages 417-442, September.
    5. Gaies, Brahim, 2024. "In search of lost social finance: How do financial instability and inequality interact?," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(PA).
    6. Bodea, Cristina & Houle, Christian & Kim, Hyunwoo, 2021. "Do financial crises increase income inequality?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    7. Atsebi, Jean-Marc & Ligonnière, Samuel & Mathonnat, Clément, 2025. "Not all banking crises are alike: Assessing their distributional impacts relative to pre-crisis credit gaps," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    8. Ibarra, Carlos A. & Ros, Jaime, 2019. "The decline of the labor income share in Mexico, 1990–2015," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 570-584.
    9. Paul Maarek & Elsa Orgiazzi, 2014. "Labor Share and development," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes & University of Caen) 201410, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes, University of Caen and CNRS.
    10. Kraft, Kornelius & Lammers, Alexander, 2021. "Bargaining Power and the Labor Share - a Structural Break Approach," VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics 242342, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    11. Bruno Ćorić & Rangan Gupta, 2023. "Economic disasters and inequality: a note," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 56(5), pages 3527-3543, October.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    labour share; banking crises; currency crises;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E25 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Aggregate Factor Income Distribution
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises

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