Capital Markets Integration and Labor Market Institutions

A major development in recent decades in industrialized countries is the decline in national savings rates. Over the same period, in many countries the labor's share of national income has declined and liberalizing labor market reforms have been implemented. This paper seeks to provide a unified account of these developments. We show that globalization, in the form of increased capital mobility, provides incentives to implement labor market reforms that raise the returns to capital and improve efficiency. Nevertheless, in a world where aggregate savings reflect life-cycle motives and are mainly performed out of labor income, the associated fall in the labor share reduces aggregate savings and the pace of capital accumulation.