본문 내용으로 건더뛰기

KDI 경제교육·정보센터

ENG
  • 경제배움
  • Economic

    Information

    and Education

    Center

최신자료
The Factor Bias of External Inputs: Implications for Substitution between Capital and Labor
CEPR
2026.08.21
This paper reevaluates the longstanding debate on capital-labor substitution by examining the role of external inputs: raw materials, intermediate goods and services, imports, offshoring. Both a meta-analysis (analyzing existing estimates of substitution) and direct estimation (using U.S. data for 1963-2016) indicate that external inputs disproportionately displace labor. These findings imply (1) that the capital-labor ratio responds 40-80% more strongly to the price of labor than to the price of capital, (2) that value added cannot be modeled separably from gross output, and (3) that historical disagreements regarding substitution can be recast as an omitted variable bias involving external inputs.