Skip to main content

About the Author(s)

Karabarbounis

Loukas Karabarbounis is an associate professor of economics at the University of Minnesota. He is also a research consultant at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and a research associate in the NBER’s Economic Fluctuations and Growth Program and International Finance and Macroeconomics Program. He serves as a member of the board of editors of the American Economic Review and as an associate editor of the Journal of Monetary Economics. Prior to joining the University of Minnesota, he was an associate professor of economics at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. He has served as a senior research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Karabarbounis's research interests are in macroeconomics, labor economics, and international finance. His latest research focuses on topics such as the global decline in labor's share of income, productivity and capital flows in southern Europe, cyclicality and dispersion in labor market outcomes, and the effects of unemployment insurance policy on macroeconomic outcomes. He is a recipient of the 2016 Sloan Research Fellowship, awarded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University and an undergraduate degree from the Athens University of Economics and Business.

Neiman

Brent Neiman is a research associate in the NBER's International Finance and Macroeconomics and International Trade and Investment programs. He is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business and served as an associate editor of the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Journal of International Economics.

Neiman conducts research on international macroeconomics, finance, and trade. He previously served on the White House Council of Economic Advisers as a staff economist for international finance and has worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, McKinsey & Company, and the McKinsey Global Institute.

In 2014, Neiman was one of the eight economics professors in the United States and Canada to receive the Sloan Research Fellowship, an award given to early-career scientists. In 2009, he was named as one of 22 "Emerging Leaders" by the Chicago Council of Global Affairs.

Neiman earned a Bachelor of Science in Economics and a Bachelor of Applied Science, both summa cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999. In 2000, he earned a master's degree in mathematical modeling from Oxford University, where he studied as a Thouron fellow, and he earned a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 2008. He joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 2008.

Outside the classroom, Neiman is an enthusiastic golfer and was a bench warmer on the 1998 Ivy League Champion golf team as an undergraduate. He also enjoys travel and is always up for dim sum.

Endnotes

1. Some notable exceptions include O. Blanchard, "The Medium Run," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2, 1997, pp. 89-158; O. Blanchard and F. Giavazzi, "Macroeconomic Effects of Regulation and Deregulation in Goods and Labor Markets," NBER Working Paper 8120, February 2001, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(3), August 2003, pp. 879–907; and C. Jones, "Growth, Capital Shares, and a New Perspective on Production Functions," Working Paper, 2003.   Go to ⤴︎
2. In thinking about the cross-section, for example, D. Gollin, "Getting Income Shares Right," Journal of Political Economy, 110(2), 2002, pp. 458–74, stressed the pitfalls in studying labor shares without a careful accounting for the mixed income earned by proprietors and unincorporated businesses. By the late 1990s or early 2000s, few countries had long and consistent time series that allowed for our preferred treatment of this income.   Go to ⤴︎
3. L. Karabarbounis and B. Neiman, "The Global Decline of the Labor Share," NBER Working Paper 19136, October 2013, and The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(1), February 2014, pp. 61–103.   Go to ⤴︎
4. While we view it as an improvement in this regard over the total labor share, see M. Smith, D. Yagan, O. Zidar, and E. Zwick, "Capitalists in the Twenty-First Century," Working Paper, 2017, for a discussion of why even the corporate sector's labor share is not fully isolated from the behavior of sole proprietors.   Go to ⤴︎
5. See L. Karabarbounis and B. Neiman, "Capital Depreciation and Labor Shares Around the World: Measurement and Implications," NBER Working Paper 20606, November 2014, and B. Bridgman, "Is Labor's Loss Capital's Gain? Gross Versus Net Labor Shares," Macroeconomic Dynamics, July 2017.   Go to ⤴︎
6. Similar conclusions are reached in analyses of a different global data set in "International Monetary Fund, "Understanding the Downward Trend in Labor Income Shares," World Economic Outlook, April 2017, pp. 121–72.   Go to ⤴︎
7. This pattern can be found in several firm or plant-level analyses of U.S. data, including D. Autor, D. Dorn, L. Katz, C. Patterson, and J. Van Reenen, "Concentrating on the Fall of the Labor Share," NBER Working Paper 23108, January 2017, and American Economic Review Papers & Proceedings, 107(5), May 2017, pp. 180–5; B. Hartman-Glaser, H. Lustig, and M. Zhang, "Capital Share Dynamics When Firms Insure Workers," NBER Working Paper 22651, October 2017; M. Kehrig and N. Vincent, "Growing Productivity Without Growing Wages: The Micro-Level Anatomy of the Aggregate Labor Share Decline," Working Paper, 2017. Go to ⤴︎
8. See P. Krusell, L. Ohanian, J.-V. Rios-Rull and G. Violante, "Capital-Skill Complementarity and Inequality: A Macroeconomic Analysis," Econometrica, 68(5), September 2000, pp. 1029–53. Go to ⤴︎
9. See M. Rognlie, "Deciphering the Fall and Rise in the Net Capital Share: Accumulation, or Scarcity?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 46(1), spring 2015, pp. 1–69; S. Barkai, "Declining Labor and Capital Shares," Working Paper, 2017; and J. De Loecker and J. Eeckhout, "The Rise of Market Power and the Macroeconomic Implications," NBER Working Paper 23687, August 2017, for work elaborating on this rise in economic profits as it relates to the labor share. Go to ⤴︎
10. See P. Chen, L. Karabarbounis, and B. Neiman, "The Global Rise of Corporate Saving," NBER Working Paper  23133, March 2017, and Journal of Monetary Economics, 89, August 2017, pp. 1–19. Go to ⤴︎

More from NBER

In addition to working papers, the NBER disseminates affiliates’ latest findings through a range of free periodicals — the NBER Reporter, the NBER Digest, the Bulletin on Retirement and Disability, the Bulletin on Health, and the Bulletin on Entrepreneurship — as well as online conference reports, video lectures, and interviews.

15th Annual Feldstein Lecture, Mario Draghi, "The Next Flight of the Bumblebee: The Path to Common Fiscal Policy in the Eurozone cover slide
  • Lecture
Dr. Mario Draghi, who served as President of the European Central Bank and Prime Minister of Italy, presented the 2023...
2023 Methods Lectures, Jesse Shapiro and Liyang (Sophie) Sun, "Linear Panel Event Studies" Primary tabs
  • Lecture
Overview: Linear panel event studies are increasingly used to estimate and plot causal effects of changes in policies...
2023, SI Economics of Social Security, Panel Discussion, "Long-Term Dynamics of the Employment-to-Population Ratio" Primary tabs
  • Lecture
Supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley...

© 2023 National Bureau of Economic Research. Periodical content may be reproduced freely with appropriate attribution.