The division of the added-value is the distribution of the Added-value to a good after one deduced from the price of this good the cost of the intermediate consumptions, between different the Factors of production.

Introduction and definitions

While reconsidering the mathematical definition of the Added-value:

GOES = value of the production - cost of the intermediate consumptions = Σ allocated remunerations to the Factors of production

It is noted that the increase in value thus realized has as a counterpart the payment of remunerations or Revenu S (Salaire S, Intérêt S, Dividende S, etc) with the productive factors which allowed its realization.

Generally, one differentiates two large recipients from these payments: the Capital and the work. The stake of the division of the added-value is thus of knowing which share of this one is transferred with each factor, and if this distribution is optimal.

The division of the added-value

First of all it should be stressed that there exist difficulties of defining the share of work exactly, and thus of the capital, in the added-value. To summarize, two great questions arise: firstly how to define the division for the individual contractors? A solution consists in allotting to them fictitious wages, considered from that of paid intervening in the same sector. In addition, the do national insurance contributions have to be integrated into the remuneration of labor? The majority of the authors regarding those as a differed indirect remuneration, a catch of load which the employees would have to pay if not in the event of disaster, they are generally included in the share of work. These remarks having been made, one can estimate the evolution of the division of the added-value. One finds for two relatively different countries, the France and the the United States, of the rather similar values, even if the short-term evolutions can differ.

However, one can notice that the division of the added-value has properties of remarkable means and long run. Firstly this one, in France as in the United States, is overall in 2000 equal to its value of the beginning of last century. For the United Kingdom, constancy was observed since 1900 per one period beginning in 1860 by Sir Arthur Bowley in its work Wages and Income in the United Kingdom since 1860 , putting for the first up to date time this constant of the Macroéconomie. This result is surprising whereas our economies knew upheavals with the drastic reduction of the weight of agriculture, the passage of an industrial economy to a saving in services, the Décolonisation or a Industrial revolution with information technologies. Secondly, division 1/3, 2/3 seems quasi-universal of a country to another on a given date, whereas the economic structures are extremely different and that one notes of a sector to another of the Taux of margin going from 10 to 70%. The division of the added-value thus seems to be independent of the structure of the economy and the level of Profit of the companies.

On the other hand, in the short run, this distribution can change. If the French example is taken, the share of work increased between 1959 (59  %) and 1982 (68  %), then decreased during the Années 1980 following the policy of competitive reduction of inflation, and remained relatively stable thereafter.

France is rather close to the distribution within UE-15, with a share of the Capital slightly weaker and a share of the wages a little higher.

In 2003, France is the fourth host country of the direct investments coming from abroad behind Great Britain, China and the United States (according to OECD).

Stakes of the division of the added-value

The division of the added-value has at the same time economic and social implications. Economically, it determines on the whole the relative importance of total flows of the Consommation and the Investissement. If a big part of the added-value is granted to work, consumption will be favoured. If on the contrary it is the capital which draws its pin from the play it is the investment which could be increased. Socially, one can say that the division of GOES translated the capacity of the paid in the salary negotiations. Weak in period of fort Unemployment, one can imagine that the share of work in the added-value increases with the resumption of the labor market.

In a classical vision of economist, for which the capital el work are imperfectly substitutable, the division of the added-value is more one question of power struggles that economic sizes, even if weak a Unemployment rate for example, can reinforce the capacity of negotiations of paid or, in parallel, the scarcity of the capital that of the capital. The volume of employment is fixed: it is entirely determined by the stock of available capital, i.e. by the stock of capital of the economy. Once the added-value was released, it is necessary to decide how one distributes this one between capital and labor. This division puts concerned a distributive conflict then: Thomas Piketty writes thus on this subject “In the absence of any public action of redistribution, the effective division between capital and labor will depend, for example, of the capacity of negotiations of the trade unions, the capacities of the employers to adapt a big part, or more generally of the state present of the power struggles between capitalists and workers. ”. In another economic outlook, in which work and capital are substitutable, the price for the factors will play a part in the allowance of these two factors in the productive process: in other words if work is “too greedy”, one replaces the workmen by machines. But there still one can consider that this substitutability is an argument in the distributive conflict: if the employees have a too high share, the employer can threaten to replace the labor by capital. Conversely if the capital is too expensive (raised interest rate, strong cost of machines…) the employer can resort to more work while waiting for a fall of this one.

Which is the interest for the State to intervene in the distribution of the value added? Firstly it should be noticed that the State can influence in favor of one or the other part of two manners: either while weighing during the negotiations, or by acting a posteriori while redistributing by the tax. To support the capital answers a concern of preserving the capacities and the incentives of the companies and owners to invest and accumulate capital and thus to increase the future capacities of productions of the economy. To support work amounts increasing the Salaires and answers a will of revival of the growth by consumption, in a logic keynésienne.

Notes and references of the article