13 Use of Spies | The Art of War by Sun Tzu (Animated)
17 May 2018 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economic history, laws of war, war and peace Tags: espionage
Dead Wrong with Johan Norberg – Oxfam is at it Again
17 May 2018 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, development economics, economic history Tags: pessimism bias, The Great Fact
6 Diseases That Have Shaped Human History
16 May 2018 Leave a comment
in economic history, health economics
The last word on Piketty
16 May 2018 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, development economics, economic history, history of economic thought, labour economics, poverty and inequality Tags: Deirdre McCloskey
Why did Cosmonauts take Shotguns into Space?
16 May 2018 Leave a comment
in economic history, transport economics Tags: space
What Japanese Prison Food is Like ★ ONLY in JAPAN
15 May 2018 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of crime Tags: Japan
How the world’s first subway system was built
14 May 2018 Leave a comment
in economic history, transport economics Tags: London
Why did Cosmonauts take Shotguns into Space?
13 May 2018 Leave a comment
in economic history, transport economics Tags: space
Tosher / Sewer Hunter (Worst Jobs in History)
12 May 2018 Leave a comment
in economic history, health economics, labour economics, occupational choice Tags: compensating differences
Everything is on Sale Compared to 1979
10 May 2018 Leave a comment
in economic growth, economic history Tags: The Great Enrichment
Deirdre McCloskey – interview
09 May 2018 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic history Tags: Deirdre McCloskey
My favourite Brad Delong quote for #Marx200 #Marx2018 @SenSanders
09 May 2018 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, Marxist economics, Public Choice
#Marx200 The private sector net labour share has been stable for decades in NZ! Our local top 1% should be drummed out of the international ruling class for just not trying, much less succeeding in any way in extracting more labour surplus to ensure the rich get richer and the poor get poorer
09 May 2018 Leave a comment
in economic history, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality

Source: Benjamin Bridgman & Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy (2016) The fall (and rise) of labour share in New Zealand, New Zealand Economic Papers, DOI: 10.1080/00779954.2016.1219763
To quote their abstract
The share of national income going to labour in New Zealand fell substantially between the 1970s and the end of the century. Approximately half of this decline was then recovered in the following decade. In this paper, we argue that the decline from the mid-1980s onwards is due to public sector reforms. Corporatisation re-orientated the public trading enterprises away from a broad range of social and trading objectives towards generating profits, while increased fiscal discipline in non-market government departments reduced payroll costs. Consistent with this hypothesis, we show that most of the decline in aggregate labour share from the mid-1980s onwards can be attributed to a significant fall in the labour share of the public sector. To more formally analyse the effects of the reforms, we build a simple model of structural transition. The model yields several predictions that are consistent with observed trends in sectoral labour share. First, there is a large and permanent decline in public sector labour share after the reforms. Second, there is a smaller, short-run decline in private sector labour share that is reversed over the long run. The model can, therefore, explain not only the decline in aggregate labour share from the mid-1980s onwards; it can also explain the partial recovery in labour share beginning in 2002.


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