Did robots cause the decline of labor? Or was it China?

Why has labor's share of income declined in advanced countries?

China Factory
(Image credit: (ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images))

One of my favorite teachers at Michigan was a self-effacing but brilliant labor economist named Mike Elsby. Mike has sadly decamped for Scotland, but he continues to turn out excellent papers. One of his latest, a Brookings conference paper, takes on a hugely important question that has been on everyone's minds of late: Why has labor's share of income declined in advanced countries?

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