The labor share is not in general falling

We study the joint impact of three measurement issues in the empirical literature on the labor share: (i) start and end periods for the empirical analysis; (ii) accounting for self-employment; and (iii) accounting for residential real estate income. When we correct for these three potential biases, we do not find a general decline in the labor share in our sample of advanced economies. In that respect the behavior of the US labor share after 2000 presents a puzzle.

That is from a new NBER Working Paper by Gilbert Cette, Lorraine Koehl, and Thoimas Philippon.

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