macroeconomy as a whole, nor will the financial and economic crisis and the recovery in Germany be discussed. For these issues, the interested reader is referred to Detzer et al. (2013) and Detzer/Hein (2014), for example. Trends of re-distribution in Germany The period of finance-dominated capitalism has been associated with a massive redistribution of income. First, functional income distribution has changed at the expense of labour and in favour of broad capital income in several countries (Table 1). The labour income share, as a measure taken from the national accounts and corrected for the changes in the composition of employment regarding employees and self-employed, shows a falling trend in the developed capitalist economies considered here, from the early 1980s until the Great Recession, if we look at cyclical averages in order to eliminate cyclical fluctuations due to the well-known counter-cyclical properties of the labour income share. As can be seen, the fall in Germany was considerable, in particular from the cycle of the 1990s to the cycle of the early 2000s. However, redistribution was even more pronounced in several other countries, as for example Austria, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Japan.
macroeconomy as a whole, nor will the financial and economic crisis and the recovery in Germany be discussed. For these issues, the interested reader is referred to Detzer et al. (2013) and Detzer/Hein (2014), for example. Trends of re-distribution in Germany The period of finance-dominated capitalism has been associated with a massive redistribution of income. First, functional income distribution has changed at the expense of labour and in favour of broad capital income in several countries (Table 1). The labour income share, as a measure taken from the national accounts and corrected for the changes in the composition of employment regarding employees and self-employed, shows a falling trend in the developed capitalist economies considered here, from the early 1980s until the Great Recession, if we look at cyclical averages in order to eliminate cyclical fluctuations due to the well-known counter-cyclical properties of the labour income share. As can be seen, the fall in Germany was considerable, in particular from the cycle of the 1990s to the cycle of the early 2000s. However, redistribution was even more pronounced in several other countries, as for example Austria, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Japan.
financialisation_and_income_distribution_germany.docx