Discussion paper

DP11810 Concentrating on the Fall of the Labor Share

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.

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Citation

Dorn, D, D Autor, L Katz, C Patterson and J Van Reenen (2017), ‘DP11810 Concentrating on the Fall of the Labor Share‘, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 11810. CEPR Press, Paris & London. https://cepr.org/publications/dp11810