Monopsony Power and Inequality

Descripción del proyecto

La fijación de salarios y la desigualdad

En los mercados laborales actuales, muchos empresarios pueden fijar salarios por debajo del nivel vigente en otras empresas sin temor a perder trabajadores. Este poder de mercado (monopsonio) permite pagar a los trabajadores menos del valor de lo que producen y les expone a riesgos sanitarios relacionados con el trabajo. Este modelo también se caracteriza por unos niveles de empleo reducidos en contraste con los mercados competitivos. En este contexto, el equipo del proyecto MARKINDOWN, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, pretende desentrañar las fuentes del poder del monopsonio y sus repercusiones en diversos grupos socioeconómicos. Desde desvelar prácticas contraria a la competencia ocultas hasta analizar el efecto de las lagunas informativas en la elección de empleo, el proyecto es un empeño global que promete ideas que podrían remodelar las políticas.

Objetivo

What is the role played by monopsony (monopoly power in the demand for labor) in widening earning inequalities? Recent studies documented the pervasiveness of monopsony power in modern labor markets. Monopsonistic employers can cut wages without losing workers to competitors, pay labor below its productivity and hire fewer workers than in a competitive labor market. The equilibrium is inefficient as the surplus given by market power is lower than the surplus extracted from workers who are also exposed to excessive work injury risk. Monopsony contributes to explain declining labor shares of income, persistently high levels of workplace accidents, and limited disemployment effects of minimum wages. Much less is known about the role of monopsony in increasing earning inequality. This project aims at filling this gap by i) contributing to a better understanding of the sources of monopsony power and ii) assessing their relevance across different socio-economic groups.
Monopsony power can be due to anticompetitive arrangements introduced often in a non-transparent way in labor contracts.Another source of monopsony power is lack of information on alternative job opportunities. Frictions in the matching of workers and vacancies may discourage risk averse workers when planning to quit the firm after wage cuts. Spatial mismatch in the allocation of jobs and quitters may increase monopsony power vis-à-vis workers having a stronger distaste for commuting. Some groups of workers may also have stronger cognitive biases when interpreting available information on outside opportunities. The three parts of the project will i) assess the incidence of anticompetitive arrangements in Europe, ii) estimate firm-level labor supply elasticities across different categories of workers, and iii) using survey and experimental methods, evaluate to what extent the heterogeneity among socio-economic groups of willingness to quit a low-paid job is related to lack of information or cognitive biases.

Ámbito científico (EuroSciVoc)

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