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Working Paper
Endogenous Bargaining Power and Declining Labor Compensation Share
We document that the protracted decline in the labor share has been accompanied by a decline in the tightness rate defined as the number of vacancies per job seekers. We argue that these two trends are related. When vacancies and job seekers are complements in the matching process, a decline in the tightness rate reduces workers’ fundamental bargaining power as defined by Hosios (1990), which in turn reduces the labor share of income. We calibrate a search and matching model extended to allow for an endogenous determination of bargaining power. The model can rationalize the common trends in ...
Working Paper
Endogenous Bargaining Power and Declining Labor Compensation Share
Workhorse search and matching models assume constant bargaining weights, while recent evidence indicates that weights vary across time and in cross section. We endogenize bargaining weights in a life-cycle search and matching model by replacing a standard Cobb-Douglas (CD) matching function with a general constant elasticity of substitution (CES) matching function and study the implications for the long-term labor share and bargaining power in the U.S. The CES model explains 64 percent of the reported decline in the labor share since 1980, while the CD model explains only 28 percent of the ...