Corporate Share Repurchase Policies and Labor Share

Xudong Fu, Darren Kisgen and Lei Kong

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: Using census data, we investigate whether share repurchases are responsible for the fall in labor share in U.S. corporations. Recent legislation imposes taxes on share repurchases, motivated by the assertion that share repurchases have led to reduced labor payments. Using several empirical approaches, we find no evidence that increases in share repurchases contribute to decreases in labor share. Top share repurchasing firms since 1982 did not decrease labor share. We also rely on exogenous changes in share repurchases around EPS announcements to pinpoint causality. Policies aimed at improving labor share by discouraging share repurchases will likely not achieve their objectives.

Keywords: share repurchases; labor share; dividend; payout; taxes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-02
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2025/adrm/ces/CES-WP-25-14.pdf First version, 2025 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:25-14

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dawn Anderson ().