Labor Income Share Dynamics with Variable Elasticity of Substitution

Saumik Paul

No 12418, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The accumulation principle suggests that complementarity between capital and labor forces the labor income share to rise in the presence of capital accumulation. The CES model estimates using data from 20 Japanese industries between 1970 and 2012 explain the same outcome but with substitutable factor inputs. To resolve this puzzle, this paper proposes a variable elasticity of substitution (VES-W) framework that embodies a variable elasticity of substitution and a share parameter as a non-linear function of the Weibull distribution of capital-labor ratio. Empirical findings support the choice of a variable elasticity of substitution. While the estimated structural parameters calibrate the actual output level and the movements in factor income shares reasonably well in both the CES and VES-W models, the VES-W model outcomes support the accumulation principle by achieving the same result but with complementary factor inputs.

Keywords: substitution elasticity; labor income share; production function parameters (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E21 E22 E25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2019-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma, nep-mac and nep-ore
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp12418.pdf (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:iza:izadps:dp12418

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().