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Measuring the Labour Income Share of Developing Countries: Learning from Social Accounting Matrices

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  • Katharina Trapp

Abstract

This paper is the first to address the challenges of measuring the labour income share of developing countries. The poor availability and reliability of national accounts data, and the fact that self-employed people, whose labour income is hard to capture, account for a major share of the workforce and often work in the informal sector, render its computation difficult. I consult social accounting matrices as an additional source of information to construct a labour share dataset backed up with microeconomic evidence.

Suggested Citation

  • Katharina Trapp, 2015. "Measuring the Labour Income Share of Developing Countries: Learning from Social Accounting Matrices," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2015-041, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2015-041
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    Cited by:

    1. Paul Maarek & Elsa Orgiazzi, 2020. "Development and the Labor Share," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 34(1), pages 232-257.
    2. Lange, Steffen & Pohl, Johanna & Santarius, Tilman, 2020. "Digitalization and energy consumption. Does ICT reduce energy demand?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    3. Bengtsson, Erik & Waldenström, Daniel, 2018. "Capital Shares and Income Inequality: Evidence from the Long Run," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 78(3), pages 712-743, September.
    4. Barker, Tom & Üngör, Murat, 2019. "Vietnam: The next asian Tiger?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 96-118.
    5. Malte Luebker, 2017. "Poverty, employment and inequality in the SDGs: heterodox discourse, orthodox policies?," Chapters, in: Peter A.G. van Bergeijk & Rolph van der Hoeven (ed.), Sustainable Development Goals and Income Inequality, chapter 8, pages 141-168, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Bruno Carballa Smichowski & Cédric Durand & Steven Knauss, 2016. "Uneven development patterns in global value chains," Working Papers hal-01368948, HAL.
    7. repec:hal:cepnwp:hal-01368948 is not listed on IDEAS

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