2023-02-28-IMF-生产技术_市场力量与劳动力份额的下降（英）_41页_1mb

** Production Technology, Market Power, and the Decline of the Labor Share **

** Summary **

• Capital deepening (capital accumulation) requires an elasticity of substitution (σ) greater than 1 to explain falling labor shares, but evidence shows σ ≤ 1 for most manufacturing sectors, suggesting capital accumulation does not drive down labor shares.
• Market power effects, measured through rising markups, account for a significant portion (76%) of the labor share decline in manufacturing if using the markup series from Barkai (2020). Alternative markup measures (Hall, 2018; De Loecker et al., 2020) exaggerate the effect.
• Factor contributions alone (capital-labor substitution) are insufficient to explain labor share trends without market power changes. The labor share would remain stable absent rising market power.
• Structural transformation and fragmentation in labor’s effective contribution to value-added also do not explain the decline, reinforcing that market power is the primary driver.
• The analysis uses the system approach for production function estimation and accounts for heterogeneous production technology across manufacturing sectors.