Not a Typical Firm: Capital-Labor Substitution and Firms' Labor Shares

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hubmer, Joachim; Restrepo, Pascual
• 署名单位: University of Pennsylvania; Yale University; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MACROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7707
• DOI: 10.1257/mac.20230325
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: technology; decline; robots; rise; automation; entry; tasks; EXIT; RACE

摘要

The US labor share has declined, especially in manufacturing and retail. Yet the labor share of a typical firm in these sectors has risen. We introduce a model where firms incur fixed costs to automate tasks. A decline in the price of capital goods used for automation reproduces the observed patterns: large firms automate tasks, reducing the aggregate labor share, while the median firm continues to operate a labor-intensive technology. When calibrating the automation fixed costs to match the observed adoption heterogeneity, the model generates the aggregate and firm-level facts quantitatively in response to lower capital prices, especially in manufacturing. (JEL D21, D33, E25, L60, O32)