This paper reports evidence that OECD economies adopting fixed exchange rates in the process of forming the European currency union experienced declines in labor share of income at the industry level. This occurs most sharply among countries that experienced the biggest changes in their exchange rate policy. An implication of New Keynesian sticky price theory is that monetary policy has a first-order impact on labor share through the interaction of business cycle uncertainty and the choice of optimal markups. However, there is also evidence that goods market integration encouraged by the euro had a negative impact on the bargaining position of labor.

Proxies that measure the effect of World War II on a country's capital stock are used as instruments for estimating standard cross-country growth regressions. The war's destruction should offer a natural experiment that allows us to consistently estimate the speed at which productivity growth converges to its long-run path. This paper presents evidence that convergence rates are approximately 4% to 6% per annum, substantially larger than conventional wisdom.