Työtulo-osuuden lasku Yhdysvalloissa ja muissa kehittyneissä talouksissa

This thesis is a literature review of empirical research on the decline of the labor share in the U.S. and other advanced economies. Focussing mostly on research done in the past few decades when the decline became a more widely studied subject, I examine different proposed mechanisms presented in the literature, and review whether they have contributed to the decline. These mechanisms include technological change, globalization, changes in market dynamics, and declining worker power, which operate in varying degrees and often interact with each other. The interlinked nature of the proposed explanations can cause overlap between mechanisms, making identification and ordering difficult. Nonetheless, in the studies reviewed, I find evidence consistent with all the examined explanations having contributed to the decline. As such, no single mechanism appears independently capable of accounting for the changes in the factor shares, and the declining labor share is best interpreted as a multi-causal phenomenon with interacting drivers.