Guschanski, Alexander ORCID: 0000-0002-7818-8264 and Onaran, Özlem ORCID: 0000-0002-6345-9922 (2017) The political economy of income distribution: industry level evidence from 14 OECD countries. [Working Paper]

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Abstract

This article presents an econometric estimation of the determinants of the wage share, using sectoral data for 14 OECD countries for the period 1970- 2014. We present estimations for the wage share of high- and low-skilled workers and within manufacturing and service industries. We augment sectoral data with input-output tables and union density data to obtain detailed estimations of the effect of technological change, globalisation and bargaining power on the wage share.

We find a significant negative effect of globalisation and we discover offshoring to emerging markets to be a robust driver of this process. Technological change had an impact which differs by skill group, but theoretical issues and lack of robustness of the results cast doubt on the hypothesis of skill-biased technological change as a key factor in the overall decline in the wage share. Furthermore, we find a robust effect of institutional factors such as union density and minimum wages on the wage share, lending strong support to the political economy approach to functional income distribution.

Item Type:	Working Paper
Uncontrolled Keywords:	wage share, income distribution, union density, technology, offshoring
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Business Faculty of Business > Institute of Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability (IPEGFA) > Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre (GPERC) Faculty of Business > Department of International Business & Economics
Last Modified:	04 Aug 2021 16:33
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/17518

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