A Comment on: “Walras–Bowley Lecture: Market Power and Wage Inequality” by Shubhdeep Deb, Jan Eeckhout, Aseem Patel, and Lawrence Warren

John van Reenen

Econometrica, 2024, vol. 92, issue 3, 643-646

Abstract: A burgeoning literature in labor economics is focused on modeling employer labor market power, generally finding nontrivial estimates of monopsony power. A smaller literature also simultaneously incorporates product market power. Deb, Eeckhout, Patel, and Warren (2024) is an example of applying an oligopoly‐oligopsony model to the U.S. labor market, arguing for important effects on wage levels and inequality from rising market power. I support combining IO and labor as a fruitful way of studying wages and business dynamism, but argue for looking more broadly at (i) differential degrees of employer power in labor and product markets; (ii) investigating the dynamic sources of markups (e.g., through innovation), and (iii) considering wage bargaining models, not just wage posting models, which have some starkly different implications for wage setting.

Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA22248

Related works:
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:wly:emetrp:v:92:y:2024:i:3:p:643-646

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.economet ... ordering-back-issues

Access Statistics for this article

Econometrica is currently edited by Guido W. Imbens

More articles in Econometrica from Econometric Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().