Here is a new and sure to be controversial piece from the JPE:
Why does the stock market rise and fall? From 1989 to 2017, the real per capita value of corporate equity increased at a 7.2% annual rate. We estimate that 40% of this increase was attributable to a reallocation of rewards to shareholders in a decelerating economy, primarily at the expense of labor compensation. Economic growth accounted for just 25% of the increase, followed by a lower risk price (21%) and lower interest rates (14%). The period 1952–88 experienced only one-third as much growth in market equity, but economic growth accounted for more than 100% of it.
That is by Daniel L. Greenwald, Martin Leftau, and Sydney C. Ludvigson. Of course in more recent times it is tech stocks that have done very well, and they also tend to elevate pay standards.
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