Working Paper Series no. 99: Profit Share in France and a Number of Major Industrialised Countries: Empirical Analysis over the Period 1970-2000

Abstract

This study explores the factors driving the observed movements of the profit share in several major industrialised countries (France, Germany, United States, United Kingdom and Japan) over the period 1970-2000. Within the group of countries we study, both the level and the fluctuations of the profit share strongly depend on the self employment correction.
Due to long process of adjustment of the production factors and the real wage, the econometric long term corresponding to the span of the data appears to be too short to be considered as an economic long term. Within such a limited period, profit share could then be influenced by the real interest rate and also by external terms of trade shocks and keynesian disequilibriums on the goods or the labour markets.

Mustapha Baghli, Gilbert Cette and Arnaud Sylvain
January 2003

Classification JEL : C22, C82, E25.

Keywords : sharing of value added, profit shares, economic medium-term, increasing share of wage-earners in workforce.