 Democracy and the Labor Share of Income: A Cross-Country AnalysisChapter Chapter 6 in Labor Income Share in Asia, 2019, pp 151-176 from Springer Abstract: Abstract Summary statistics on the labor share of income show that between-country variation is much greater than within-country variation: functional income distribution is determined by factors which change substantially across countries but are persistent over time. This article attempts to shed some light on the long-run and political economy determinants of the labor income share. We revisit and extend previous empirical research on democratic political institutions and the labor share using a dataset of 112 countries over the period 1970–2015. Our empirical analysis shows that democracy allows workers to appropriate a higher share of national income. The evidence is robust to different indices of democracy and different periods of time, and after performing instrumental variable estimation. These results are particularly relevant today, in light of the recent global decline in the labor income share and current crisis of democracy. Keywords: Labor share; Factor income distribution; Democracy; Political economy; Institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers) There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:adbchp:978-981-13-7803-4_6 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from DOI: 10.1007/978-981-13-7803-4_6 Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in ADB Institute Series on Development Economics from Springer |
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