노동소득분배율의 변동요인 : 요소증대적 기술진보를 고려한 CES 생산함수 분석

Based on the methodology of Antras(2004) and Lawrence(2015), this paper estimates a CES production function with factor-augmenting technological progress for the Korean aggregate and manufacturing time series; with those estimation results, a model simulation is implemented to account for the recent declining trend in labor income share. The elasticity of substitution between capital and labor is estimated to be significantly below one, for both total economy and manufacturing industry. It implies that, as factors of production, capital and labor are complements, rather than substitutes. Meanwhile, for both total economy and manufacturing industry, labor-augmenting technology is estimated to have progressed faster than capital-augmenting one. Model simulation reveals that the estimated CES production function can account for the greater part of the recent decline in labor income share; for the manufacturing industry, the estimated model can account for about a half or even one hundred percent of changes in labor income share, while 83∼88% for the total economy. The simulation result indicates that the recent decline in Korean labor income share may be almost fully attributed to the fact that effective capital-labor ratio has been decreasing, which occurs because the labor-augmenting technology has progressed faster than the capital-augmenting one, under the condition that capital and labor are complements.