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Author: Bhaskar, V.
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Bhaskar, V.
Manning, Alan
To, Ted
Oligopsony and Monopsonistic Competition in Labor Markets
Journal of Economic Perspectives 16,2 (Spring 2002): 155-174.
Also: http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/0895330027300
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: American Economic Association
Keyword(s): Firms; Labor Economics; Labor Market Outcomes; Wage Determination

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Since its genesis in industrial organization and the theory of the firm, models of imperfect competition have permeated many fields of economics ranging from international trade to macroeconomics to public finance. For example, in the 1980s, the introduction of product market imperfections revolutionized our understanding of trade policies and comparative advantage (Brander and Spencer, 1985; Krugman, 1979). At the same time, macroeconomists began to use models of monopolistic competition to explain how small costs of adjusting prices could give rise to business fluctuations (Akerlof and Yellen, 1985; Blanchard and Kiyotaki, 1987; Mankiw, 1985). This trend is now influencing labor economics, with a growing literature arguing that employers have some market power in the setting of wages. Indeed, the most common sources for market power--product differentiation and imperfect information--seem to apply with equal if not greater force to labor markets as compared with product markets. The advantage of an approach based on oligopsony is that it leads to more plausible and less elaborate explanations of many labor market phenomena that are otherwise regarded as puzzles. This paper surveys a number of areas where this approach has proved fruitful in recent years.
Bibliography Citation
Bhaskar, V., Alan Manning and Ted To. "Oligopsony and Monopsonistic Competition in Labor Markets." Journal of Economic Perspectives 16,2 (Spring 2002): 155-174.