Artificial Intelligence,Structural Change and Labor Income Share

Artificial intelligence(AI)is a strategic technology that leads a new round of technological revolution and structural transformation.This paper studies the effects of AI on structural change and factor income shares.As a general purpose technology and new infrastructure,AI may substitute either labor or capital and its application has differential prospects across sectors.With a multi-sector general dynamic equilibrium model,we find that AI services or AI-specific technologies will reallocate factors between sectors.The direction of the reallocation depends on sectoral differences in the output elasticity of AI and in the elasticity of substitution between AI and traditional modes of production.The process of structural change will in turn change the labor income share.This paper presents the theoretical conditions for the direction of these changes and the underlying economic mechanism.We derive policy implications about how to promote high-quality development with AI.

Effects of Commodity Trade Structure Variations on Labor' s Share of Income in China——An Empirical Study Based on Data of Production Industry Sectors

Proceeding from trade structure variations,this paper provides a new perspective on the study of the share of labor income in China.China's commodity trade structure has experienced a step change in recent years.According to theoretical analysis,trade exerts not only a direct effect on the share of labor income through international division of labor and specialization but also an indirect effect through factor intensity variations and technology progress bias.Empirical study discovered that export has a significant negative effect on the share of China's labor income while import has a positive effect.Import and export have different levels and directions of effect on sectors with different factor intensity.

Employment Structure,Lewis Turning Point and the Labor Share of Income:Theoretical and Empirical Analysis

In the context of the labor market segmentation in China and its reaching the Lewis turning point,this paper interprets the changing trend of the labor share of income in China from the changing perspective of the employment ownership structure.The theoretical analysis reveals that the labor share of income follows a U-shaped curve when the agricultural labor force gradually moves into the private and self-employed sectors.Using the Chinese provincial-level panel dataset between 1990 and 2016,our empirical study finds that there is a critical threshold.When the share of agricultural labor force is above this threshold value,the impact of the increase in the employment share of the urban private sector on the labor share of income is negative.In contrast,the impact becomes positive when the share of the agricultural labor force is less than or equal to this threshold value.Moreover,the impacts of other variables of employment ownership structure don’t show this kind of feature on both sides of this threshold value.The increase in the employment share of the urban private sector accounted for about 29.37%of the growing labor share of income between 2007 and 2016.This paper provides policy implications in the following four areas:institutional guarantee improvement,harmonious labor relations establishment,redistribution policy imposition and economic development pattern transformation.