  The objective of the paper is to understand if the minimum wage plays a role
for the labor share of manufacturing workers in North Macedonia. We decompose
labor share movements on those along a share-capital curve, shifts of this
locus, and deviations from it. We use the capital-output ratio, total factor
productivity and prices of inputs to capture these factors, while the minimum
wage is introduced as an element that moves the curve off. We estimate a panel
of 20 manufacturing branches over the 2012-2019 period with FE, IV and
system-GMM estimators. We find that the role of the minimum wage for the labor
share is industry-specific. For industrial branches which are labor-intensive
and low-pay, it increases workers' labor share, along a complementarity between
capital and labor. For capital-intensive branches, it reduces labor share,
likely through the job loss channel and along a substitutability between labor
and capital. This applies to both branches where foreign investment and heavy
industry are nested.
