This paper investigates determinants of changes of the labor share in developed countries with a focus on Western Europe. Using a country-industry panel that covers the private sector, the paper focuses on long and short-run changes within industries. The results show a large and time-persistent impact of increasing globalization on the labor share, especially if the within-industry changes are considered. Openness seems to be the driving force for downward movements in the industry level labor shares while technological and institutional forces impact these shares positively. Furthermore, while investments into information and communication technology (ICT) increase productivity of workers, it has a negative impact on the labor share as it enables higher economic integration which lowers the labor share. Economic integration has stronger impact on the polarization in Western European labor markets than ICT.
This paper assesses empirically the hypotheses by Bental and Demougin (2010) that innovations in ICT (Information and Communication Technology) reduce the labor share in OECD countries by improving the monitoring technology. In a first step, I show that data trends for the labor share, wages in efficiency units, and labor in efficiency units over capital can be matched by a simulation of the model of Bental and Demougin (2010). In a second approach, I confirm increasing monitoring of workers using micro data for Germany. I argue that ICT influences labor not only through substitutability of labor with ICT and foreign work, but also through to lowering rents of workers as monitoring technology improves.
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