Rent Sharing and Inclusive Growth

Brian Bell (), Pawel Bukowski () and Stephen Machin
Additional contact information
Brian Bell: King's College London
Pawel Bukowski: Central European University

No 12060, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The long-run evolution of rent sharing is empirically studied. Based upon a comprehensive and harmonized panel of the top 300 publicly quoted British companies over thirty five years, the paper reports evidence of a significant fall over time in the extent to which firms share rents with workers. It confirms that companies do share their profits with employees, but at much smaller scale today than they did during the 1980s and 1990s. This is a robust finding, corroborated with industry-level analysis for the US and EU. The decline in rent sharing is coincident with the rise of product market power that has occurred as worker bargaining power has dropped. Although firms with more market power previously shared more of their profits, they experienced a stronger fall in rent sharing after 2000.

Keywords: rent sharing; inclusive growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2018-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-eff and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Forthcoming - published as 'The Decline in Rent Sharing' in: Journal of Labor Economics, 2024, 42, 683-716

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https://docs.iza.org/dp12060.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Rent sharing and inclusive growth (2019)
Working Paper: Rent sharing and inclusive growth (2018)
Working Paper: Rent Sharing and Inclusive Growth (2018)
Working Paper: Rent sharing and inclusive growth (2018)
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