IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp5092.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Wage-Productivity Gap Revisited: Is the Labour Share Neutral to Employment?

Author

Listed:
  • Karanassou, Marika

    (Queen Mary, University of London)

  • Sala, Hector

    (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Abstract

This paper challenges the prevailing view of the neutrality of the labour income share to labour demand, and investigates its impact on the evolution of employment. Whilst maintaining the assumption of a unitary long-run elasticity of wages with respect to productivity, we demonstrate that productivity growth affects the labour share in the long run due to frictional growth (that is, the interplay of wage dynamics and productivity growth). In the light of this result, we consider a stylised labour demand equation and show that the labour share is a driving force of employment. We substantiate our analytical exposition by providing empirical models of wage setting and employment equations for France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, the UK, and the US over the 1960-2008 period. Our findings show that the time-varying labour share of these countries has significantly influenced their employment trajectories across decades. This indicates that the evolution of the labour income share (or, equivalently, the wage-productivity gap) deserves the attention of policy makers.

Suggested Citation

  • Karanassou, Marika & Sala, Hector, 2010. "The Wage-Productivity Gap Revisited: Is the Labour Share Neutral to Employment?," IZA Discussion Papers 5092, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5092
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp5092.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jordi Galí, 2011. "The Return Of The Wage Phillips Curve," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 436-461, June.
    2. M. Hashem Pesaran & Yongcheol Shin & Richard J. Smith, 2001. "Bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(3), pages 289-326.
    3. Timothy J. Hatton, 2007. "Can Productivity Growth Explain the NAIRU? Long‐Run Evidence from Britain, 1871–1999," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(295), pages 475-491, August.
    4. repec:nbr:nberre:0126 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Fabienne Llense, 2010. "French CEOs' Compensations: What is the Cost of a Mandatory Upper Limit?," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 56(2), pages 165-191, June.
    6. Avi J. Cohen, 2003. "Retrospectives: Whatever Happened to the Cambridge Capital Theory Controversies?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 199-214, Winter.
    7. Taylor, John B, 1980. "Aggregate Dynamics and Staggered Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(1), pages 1-23, February.
    8. A. Cohen & G. Harcourt., 2009. "Whatever Happened to the Cambridge Capital Theory Controversies?," VOPROSY ECONOMIKI, N.P. Redaktsiya zhurnala "Voprosy Economiki", vol. 8.
    9. Fabienne Llense, 2010. "French CEOs' Compensations: What is the Cost of a Mandatory Upper Limit?," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-00497583, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pablo Agnese & Pablo Salvador, 2012. "More alike than different: the Spanish and Irish labour markets before and after the crisis," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 1(1), pages 1-24, December.
    2. Caiani, Alessandro & Russo, Alberto & Gallegati, Mauro, 2016. "Does Inequality Hamper Innovation and Growth?," MPRA Paper 71864, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Marika Karanassou & Hector Sala, 2012. "Inequality and Employment Sensitivities to the Falling Labour Share," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 43(3), pages 343-376.
    4. Alessandro Caiani & Alberto Russo & Mauro Gallegati, 2019. "Does inequality hamper innovation and growth? An AB-SFC analysis," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 177-228, March.
    5. Dario JUDZIK & Hector SALA, 2013. "Productivity, deunionization and trade: Wage effects and labour share implications," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 152(2), pages 205-236, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marika Karanassou & Hector Sala, 2010. "The Wage-Productivity Gap Revisited: Is the Labour Share Neutral to Employment?," Working Papers 668, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    2. Marika Karanassou & Hector Sala, 2012. "Inequality and Employment Sensitivities to the Falling Labour Share," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 43(3), pages 343-376.
    3. Marika Karanassou & Hector Sala, 2012. "Inequality and Employment Sensitivities to the Falling Labour Share," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 43(3), pages 343-376.
    4. Marika Karanassou & Hector Sala, 2012. "Productivity Growth And The Phillips Curve: A Reassessment Of The Us Experience," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(3), pages 344-366, July.
    5. Marika Karanassou & Hector Sala, 2012. "Productivity Growth And The Phillips Curve: A Reassessment Of The Us Experience," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(3), pages 344-366, July.
    6. Eladio Febrero & Maria-Angeles Cadarso, 2006. "Pay-As-You-Go versus funded systems. Some critical considerations," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(3), pages 335-357.
    7. Bergheim, Stefan, 2007. "Pair-wise cointegration in long-run growth models," Research Notes 24, Deutsche Bank Research.
    8. Dittmann, Ingolf & Maug, Ernst & Zhang, Dan, 2011. "Restricting CEO pay," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 1200-1220, September.
    9. Peter Spahn, 2007. "Real Interest Rates, Intertemporal Prices and Macroeconomic Stabilization A Journey Through the History of Economic Thought," Diskussionspapiere aus dem Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre der Universität Hohenheim 292/2007, Department of Economics, University of Hohenheim, Germany.
    10. Dalgaard, Carl-Johan & Strulik, Holger, 2011. "Energy distribution and economic growth," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 782-797.
    11. Latsos Sophia, 2018. "Real Wage Effects of Japan’s Monetary Policy," ORDO. Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, De Gruyter, vol. 69(1), pages 177-215, July.
    12. Guillaume Daudin, 2006. "Paying Transaction Costs," Documents de Travail de l'OFCE 2006-14, Observatoire Francais des Conjonctures Economiques (OFCE).
    13. Jesus Felipe & F. Gerard Adams, 2005. ""A Theory of Production" The Estimation of the Cobb-Douglas Function: A Retrospective View," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 31(3), pages 427-445, Summer.
    14. Gracia, Eduard, 2011. "Uncertainty and capacity constraints: Reconsidering the aggregate production function," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 5, pages 1-50.
    15. Karanassou, Marika & Sala, Hector & Snower, Dennis J., 2008. "Long-run inflation-unemployment dynamics: The Spanish Phillips curve and economic policy," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 279-300.
    16. Gersbach, Hans & Schmutzler, Armin, 2014. "Does globalization create superstars? A simple theory of managerial wages," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 34-51.
    17. van Suntum, Ulrich, 2008. "Dynamic efficiency and reswitching," CAWM Discussion Papers 8, University of Münster, Münster Center for Economic Policy (MEP).
    18. Andrew Phiri, 2018. "Pursuing the Philips curve in an African monarchy: A Swazi case study," Working Papers 1832, Department of Economics, Nelson Mandela University.
    19. Rui Albuquerque & Luís Cabral & José Guedes, 2019. "Incentive Pay and Systemic Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(11), pages 4304-4342.
    20. Phiri, Andrew, 2018. "Pursuing the Phillips curve in an African monarchy: The Swazi case," MPRA Paper 89199, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    wages; productivity; labour income share; employment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E25 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Aggregate Factor Income Distribution
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5092. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.