Is There Monopsony in the Labor Market? Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Doug Staiger, Joanne Spetz () and Ciaran S. Phibbs

Journal of Labor Economics, 2010, vol. 28, issue 2, 211-236

Abstract: Recent theoretical and empirical advances have renewed interest in monopsonistic models of the labor market. However, there is little direct empirical support for these models. We use an exogenous change in wages at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals as a natural experiment to investigate the extent of monopsony in the nurse labor market. We estimate that labor supply to individual hospitals is quite inelastic, with short-run elasticity around 0.1. We also find that non-VA hospitals responded to the VA wage change by changing their own wages. (c) 2010 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (149)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/652734 link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Is There Monopsony in the Labor Market? Evidence from a Natural Experiment (2008)
Working Paper: Is There Monopsony in the Labor Market? Evidence from a Natural Experiment (1999)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jlabec:v:28:y:2010:i:2:p:211-236

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Labor Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().