| Abstract: | This paper investigates the relationship between capital accountopenness and the share of labour in national income. Employinga new index of financial openness and a cross-country panelof labour shares available from the United Nations System ofNational Accounts, the author shows a robust negative correlationbetween the degree of openness and the labour share. Althoughthis effect is not present for low income countries, the directnegative relationship holds for all other subsamples and inthe presence of a variety of controls. A plausible explanationis that openness alters the conditions of bargaining betweenlabour and capital. By increasing the bargaining strength ofcapital vis-a-vis labour, increased capital mobility raisesrents accruing to capital. Thus, capital account openness mayreduce labour's share of income in the firm, and thereby, atan economy-wide level, its share of national output. |
