International Diversification, Reallocation, and the Labor Share

Joe David, Romain Ranciere and David Zeke

No 18128, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: How does growing international financial diversification affect firm-level and aggregate labor shares? We study this question using a novel framework of firm labor choice in the face of aggregate risk. The theory implies a cross-section of labor risk premia and labor shares that appear as markups in firm-level data. International risk sharing leads to a reallocation of labor towards riskier/low labor share firms alongside a rise in within-firm labor shares, matching key micro-level facts. We use cross-country firm-level data to document a number of empirical patterns consistent with the theory, namely: (i) riskier firms have lower labor shares and (ii) international financial diversification is associated with a reallocation towards risky/low labor share firms. Our estimates suggest the reallocation effect has dominated the within effect in recent decades; on net, increased financial integration has reduced the corporate labor share in the US by about 2.5 percentage points, roughly one-third of the total decline since the 1970s.

Keywords: Labor share; International diversification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F2 F23 F36 F66 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-04
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP18128 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: International Diversification, Reallocation, and the Labor Share (2023)
Working Paper: International Diversification, Reallocation, and the Labor Share (2023)
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:cpr:ceprdp:18128

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP18128

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().