Productivity, prices, and factor shares in Irish manufacturing industry 1953-70

Abstract

The share of wages and salaries in the net output of manufacturing industry over the period 1953-70 is shown in Fig. 1. The upward trend of the earlier years was reversed after 1957, and the share declined fairly.steadily over the next decade. This decline has been described by Hughes, who suggests, 'thatmost of the industry wage and salary share changed in the same direction as the industrial group wage and salary share', and so 'changes in industry weights do not appear to have been a major cause of the decline . . .'. Moreover, 'cyclical influences . . . were not important determinants of the behaviour of the wage and salary shares of the industrial groups . . .'