Concentrating on the Fall of the Labor Share
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aer.p20171102.pdf
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Author(s)
Dorn, David
Katz, Lawrence F.
Patterson, Christina
Autor, David H
Van Reenen, John Michael
Date Issued
May 2017
Journal
American Economic Review
Publisher
American Economic Association
Citation
Autor, David et al. “Concentrating on the Fall of the Labor Share.” American Economic Review 107, 5 (May 2017): 180–185
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The recent fall of labor's share of GDP in numerous countries is well-documented, but its causes are poorly understood. We sketch a "superstar firm" model where industries are increasingly characterized by "winner take most" competition, leading a small number of highly profitable (and low labor share) firms to command growing market share. Building on Autor et al. (2017), we evaluate and confirm two core claims of the superstar firm hypothesis: the concentration of sales among firms within industries has risen across much of the private sector; and industries with larger increases in concentration exhibit a larger decline in labor's share.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Sloan School of Management
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1257/AER.P20171102
