[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cen/wpaper/22-45.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What Drives Stagnation: Monopsony or Monopoly?

Author

Listed:
  • Shubhdeep Deb
  • Jan Eeckhout
  • Aseem Patel
  • Lawrence Warren
Abstract
Wages for the vast majority of workers have stagnated since the 1980s while productivity has grown. We investigate two coexisting explanations based on rising market power: 1. Monopsony, where dominant firms exploit the limited mobility of their own workers to pay lower wages; and 2. Monopoly, where dominant firms charge too high prices for what they sell, which lowers production and the demand for labor, and hence equilibrium wages economy-wide. Using establishment data from the US Census Bureau between 1997 and 2016, we find evidence of both monopoly and monopsony, where the former is rising over this period and the latter is stable. Both contribute to the decoupling of productivity and wage growth, with monopoly being the primary determinant: in 2016 monopoly accounts for 75% of wage stagnation, monopsony for 25%.

Suggested Citation

  • Shubhdeep Deb & Jan Eeckhout & Aseem Patel & Lawrence Warren, 2022. "What Drives Stagnation: Monopsony or Monopoly?," Working Papers 22-45, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    • Handle: RePEc:cen:wpaper:22-45
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2022/CES-WP-22-45.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2022
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Austan Goolsbee & Chad Syverson, 2023. "Monopsony Power in Higher Education: A Tale of Two Tracks," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(S1), pages 257-290.
    2. Xavier Giroud & Joshua Rauh, 2019. "State Taxation and the Reallocation of Business Activity: Evidence from Establishment-Level Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(3), pages 1262-1316.
    3. Andrew Atkeson & Ariel Burstein, 2008. "Pricing-to-Market, Trade Costs, and International Relative Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 1998-2031, December.
    4. Douglas O. Staiger & Joanne Spetz & Ciaran S. Phibbs, 2010. "Is There Monopsony in the Labor Market? Evidence from a Natural Experiment," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(2), pages 211-236, April.
    5. Olley, G Steven & Pakes, Ariel, 1996. "The Dynamics of Productivity in the Telecommunications Equipment Industry," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(6), pages 1263-1297, November.
    6. Raj Chetty & Adam Guren & Day Manoli & Andrea Weber, 2011. "Are Micro and Macro Labor Supply Elasticities Consistent? A Review of Evidence on the Intensive and Extensive Margins," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 471-475, May.
    7. Daniel A. Ackerberg & Kevin Caves & Garth Frazer, 2015. "Identification Properties of Recent Production Function Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83, pages 2411-2451, November.
    8. Chen Yeh & Claudia Macaluso & Brad Hershbein, 2022. "Monopsony in the US Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(7), pages 2099-2138, July.
    9. James Levinsohn & Amil Petrin, 2003. "Estimating Production Functions Using Inputs to Control for Unobservables," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(2), pages 317-341.
    10. Torberg Falch, 2010. "The Elasticity of Labor Supply at the Establishment Level," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(2), pages 237-266, April.
    11. Jordan D. Matsudaira, 2014. "Monopsony in the Low-Wage Labor Market? Evidence from Minimum Nurse Staffing Regulations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 96(1), pages 92-102, March.
    12. Anna M. Stansbury & Lawrence H. Summers, 2017. "Productivity and Pay: Is the link broken?," NBER Working Papers 24165, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Chad Syverson, 2019. "Macroeconomics and Market Power: Context, Implications, and Open Questions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(3), pages 23-43, Summer.
    14. Arindrajit Dube & Jeff Jacobs & Suresh Naidu & Siddharth Suri, 2020. "Monopsony in Online Labor Markets," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 33-46, March.
    15. Hall, Robert E, 1988. "The Relation between Price and Marginal Cost in U.S. Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(5), pages 921-947, October.
    16. Florian Ederer & Bruno Pellegrino, 2022. "A Tale of Two Networks: Common Ownership and Product Market Rivalry," NBER Working Papers 30004, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Kevin Rinz, 2018. "Labor Market Concentration, Earnings Inequality, and Earnings Mobility," CARRA Working Papers 2018-10, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    18. Burdett, Kenneth & Mortensen, Dale T, 1998. "Wage Differentials, Employer Size, and Unemployment," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(2), pages 257-273, May.
    19. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    20. Berry, Steven & Levinsohn, James & Pakes, Ariel, 1995. "Automobile Prices in Market Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(4), pages 841-890, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shubhdeep Deb & Jan Eeckhout & Aseem Patel & Lawrence Warren, 2022. "What Drives Wage Stagnation: Monopsony or Monopoly?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 20(6), pages 2181-2225.
    2. Chen Yeh & Claudia Macaluso & Brad Hershbein, 2022. "Monopsony in the US Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(7), pages 2099-2138, July.
    3. Thomas Hasenzagl & Luis Perez, 2023. "The Micro-Aggregated Profit Share," Papers 2309.12945, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2023.
    4. Anna Sokolova & Todd Sorensen, 2021. "Monopsony in Labor Markets: A Meta-Analysis," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 74(1), pages 27-55, January.
    5. Dario Tortarolo & Roman D. Zarate, 2020. "Imperfect competition in product and labour markets. A quantitative analysis," Discussion Papers 2020-05, Nottingham Interdisciplinary Centre for Economic and Political Research (NICEP).
    6. Lu, Yi & Sugita, Yoichi & 杉田, 洋一 & Zhu, Lianming, 2019. "Wage and Markdowns and FDI Liberalization," Discussion paper series HIAS-E-83, Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Hitotsubashi University.
    7. Berlingieri, Giuseppe & Blanchenay, Patrick & Criscuolo, Chiara, 2024. "The great divergence(s)," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(3).
    8. Pham, Hoang, 2023. "Trade reform, oligopsony, and labor market distortion: Theory and evidence," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    9. Ensar Yılmaz & Zeynep Kaplan, 2022. "Heterogeneity of market power: firm-level evidence," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 1207-1228, May.
    10. Jan De Loecker & Pinelopi K. Goldberg & Amit K. Khandelwal & Nina Pavcnik, 2016. "Prices, Markups, and Trade Reform," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 445-510, March.
    11. David Berger & Kyle Herkenhoff & Simon Mongey, 2022. "Labor Market Power," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(4), pages 1147-1193, April.
    12. José Azar & Xavier Vives, 2021. "General Equilibrium Oligopoly and Ownership Structure," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(3), pages 999-1048, May.
    13. Maximilian Koppenberg & Stefan Hirsch, 2022. "Markup estimation: A comparison of contemporary methods at the example of European food retailers," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(1), pages 108-133, January.
    14. Umut Kılınç, 2018. "Assessing Productivity Gains from International Trade in a Small Open Economy," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 29(5), pages 953-980, November.
    15. Nick Jacob & Giordano Mion, 2024. "On the productivity advantage of cities," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 24(5), pages 679-705.
    16. Kosuke Aoki & Yoshihiko Hogen & Kosuke Takatomi, 2023. "Price Markups and Wage Setting Behavior of Japanese Firms," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 23-E-5, Bank of Japan.
    17. Baccini, Leonardo & Impullitti, Giammario & Malesky, Edmund J., 2019. "Globalization and state capitalism: Assessing Vietnam's accession to the WTO," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 75-92.
    18. Dobbelaere, Sabien & Kiyota, Kozo & Mairesse, Jacques, 2015. "Product and labor market imperfections and scale economies: Micro-evidence on France, Japan and the Netherlands," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 290-322.
    19. Jan De Loecker & Paul T. Scott, 2016. "Estimating market power Evidence from the US Brewing Industry," NBER Working Papers 22957, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Jha, Priyaranjan & Rodriguez-Lopez, Antonio, 2021. "Monopsonistic labor markets and international trade," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Market Power. Monopsony. Monopoly. Markdowns. Markups. Wage Stagnation. Concentration. HHI.;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cen:wpaper:22-45. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Dawn Anderson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesgvus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.