摘要：This paper examines whether the labour share (wage-productivity gap) is a major factorin the evolution of inequality and employment. To this end, we use annual data for the US, UKand Sweden over the past forty years and estimate country-specific systems of labour demand andGini coefficient equations. Further to the statistical significance of our models, we validate theireconomic significance through counterfactual simulations. In particular, we evaluate thecontributions of the labour share to the trajectories of inequality and employment during specifictime intervals in the post-1990 years. We find that during the 1990s the cost of a one per centincrease in employment was in the range of 0.7 per cent-0.9 per cent higher inequality in all threecountries. However, in the 2000s, whereas the inequality-employment sensitivity ratio slightly fellin the US, it exceeded unity in the countries on the other side of the Atlantic. It obtained itshighest value in the UK, where a 1 per cent growth in employment was achieved at the expenseof 1.3 per cent worsening in income inequality. We argue that the inequality-employmentsensitivity ratio can be viewed as a barometer of socio-economic pressure, and thus the evolutionof the wage-productivity gap and its impacts on the personal income distribution and labourdemand deserve the attention of policy makers
