onsdag 14 maj 2014

Rents och funktionell inkomstfördelning

Varför kan maktförhållanden och bargaining power påverka löne- och kapitalandelar? Här är några förklaringar från litteraturen.

Harrison 2002
“In the framework below, the fraction of rents going to workers will vary with bargaining strength, which in turn will vary with global market conditions.”

Guscina 2006
“Higher degree of unionization and employment protection should have a positive effect on wages, but negative effects on employment. The net effect of these variables on the labor share is expected to be positive, but possibly eroding with globalization. Rodrik (1997) looked at the bargaining game between capital and labor in which globalization increases capital mobility, thus increasing capital’s bargaining power and its share of national income to the detriment of labor. Since lower-skilled workers benefit from employment protection more than high-skilled workers, one would expect income inequality to drop when measures of the bargaining power of labor increase.” (s 10f)

Ellis och Smith 2007
“the increasing use of IT-based capital goods, which have faster rates of obsolescence than other kinds of capital. Hornstein, Krusell and Violante (2002, 2003) show that if capital goods installed at different times embed different technological levels (so-called ‘vintage capital’), faster innovation rates will increase churn in the labour market as well. Where there are search frictions in the labour market, this increases firms’ bargaining power over the economic surplus, thereby shifting income in favour of profits. The effect is stronger where firms themselves face less competitive pressure, and where certain kinds of labour market rigidities amplify the effect of these changes on equilibrium unemployment rates.”
“Conventional microeconomic models generally predict that factor shares are determined by the underlying production technology. For example, if production functions take the well-known Cobb-Douglas form, profit maximisation with perfect competition implies that factor shares are in fixed proportion, regardless of the per-unit rates of return. However, if there are market imperfections such as externalities or monopoly power, there may also be some super-normal profits (economic rents). Shifts in bargaining power could result in a reallocation of these rents between the production factors. The Hornstein et al model discussed in section 3.1 is an example of a redistribution of the economic surpluses arising from search frictions, in that case brought about by faster technological change. Here we discuss two more possible causes of shifts in bargaining power: changes in labour market institutions, and policy changes that increase the attractiveness of income from capital relative to labour income.” (s 10f)

Arpaia och Pichelmann 2008
“Early models have tried to explain changes in the wage share in terms of underlying changes in relative factor prices, which proved useful to account for labour share movements in the 1970s. An increase in relative wages starting in the 1970s led initially to an increase in the labour share and not much effect on employment. As firms started substituting away from labour, the labour share started to fall, and unemployment to rise. Even so, it is argued that the decrease in the labour share since the mid 1980s has not been associated with a consistent increase in employment and it seems unlikely that this evolution can be solely explained by long lags or by the costs of adjusting factor proportions. A second set of contributions has analysed variations in the labour share in the framework of rent-sharing models: product market imperfections generate rents that are split between firms and unions. In this perspective, downward movements in the labour share derive from a rise of rents accruing to firms owing to rising imperfection in the goods markets, which raises the price level and eventually reduces real wages, or to weaker unions' bargaining power. This framework incorporates the effect on the labour share induced by product market regulation, which set the entry costs and the degree of competition between firms, and that of labour market regulations, which influence the unions' bargaining power. In Blanchard and Giavazzi (2003), labour market deregulation is held responsible for the decline in the labour share in continental Europe. Yet, this decline is seen as temporary; in the long-run enhanced product market deregulation should spur employment and the labour share should recover. However, increasing competition is likely to induce firms to adopt more flexible workplace organisation schemes, and these practices may well be biased against low-skilled workers.” (s 36f)

Checchi och García-Peñalosa 2008
”Unionization and centralized wage bargaining increase wages relative to those that would have prevailed in the absence of unions. If workers were paid their marginal product, this would tend to increase unemployment, but if there are rents to be split between labour and capital, higher wages need not imply more unemployed.” (s 608)

”In a standard aggregative model of the economy, if labour and product markets are competitive, the labour share depends uniquely on capital intensity, the evolution of capital-augmenting technical change and the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour (e.g. Acemoglu, 2003, Bentolila and Saint-Paul, 2003).” (s 10)
”If labour and product markets are not competitive, competition and labour market institutions (including workers’ bargaining power) will act as shifters of this relationship (see e.g. Hutchinson and Persyn, 2012). In addition, cyclical fluctuations in union bargaining power, due for example to unemployment fluctuations, can cause additional departures from this relationship. This implies that the role of these factors can in principle be studied by including additional covariates.” (s 11)


Referenser
Arpaia, A. and K. Pichelmann (2008), ‘Falling Wage Shares: A Common Trend?’, in P. Mooslechner and E. Gnan (ed), Dimensions of Inequality in the EU (Vienna: Österreichische Nationalbank), pp. 28-41.
Daniele Checchi and Cecilia García-Peñalosa (2008) "Labour market institutions and income inequality", Economic Policy.
Luci Ellis and Kathryn Smith (2007) "The global upward trend in the profit share", Bank of International Settlements.
Anastasia Guscina (2006), "Effects of Globalization on Labor’s Share in National Income", IMF Working Paper 06/294.
Ann Harrison (2002) "Has Globalization Eroded Labor’s Share? Some Cross-Country Evidence", mimeo, UC Berkeley.

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