Wages, hires, and labor market concentration

Ioana Marinescu, Ivan Ouss and Louis-Daniel Pape

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2021, vol. 184, issue C, 506-605

Abstract: How does employer market power affect workers? We compute the concentration of new hires by occupation and commuting zone in France using linked employer-employee data. Using instrumental variables, we find that a 10% increase in labor market concentration decreases hires by 3.2% and their hourly wage by nearly 0.5%, as hypothesized by monopsony theory. Based on a simple merger simulation, we find that a merger between the top two employers in the retail industry would be most damaging, with about 30 million euros in annual loss to the wage bill of new hires, and a 3000 decrease in annual hires.

Keywords: Labor market concentration; Wages; Hires; Merger simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 J32 J42 J51 L13 L40 L41 L44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Wages, hires, and labor market concentration (2021)
Working Paper: Wages, Hires, and Labor Market Concentration (2020)
Working Paper: Wages, Hires, and Labor Market Concentration (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:184:y:2021:i:c:p:506-605

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.01.033

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