buyer power with atomistic upstream entry can downstream consolidation increase production and welfare abstract this paper investigates the effects of buyer power on entry into an atomistic upstream market and economic welfare under reasonable market conditions we show that industries with a few buyers induce more upstream entry than industries with a larger number of firms in particular monopsony can be more conducive to entry and lead to higher social welfare than more fragmented industry structures this seeming paradox arises because a single buyer better internalizes the positive effects of entry on later periods supply conditions than a collection of firms this result is relevant in a number of market settings including markets for specialized labor and processing markets for agricultural products

socialism and the revenue maximizing leviathan the driving force in the government s progress from a capitalistic system to one with government ownership of capital and relative wage allocated labor socialism to a system involving inframarginal taxation of labor and government ownership of capital communism is the government s desire to increase current revenues 1 each step along the way sacrifices more private resource allocation and replaces it with direct governmental control the government might well realize that it lacks the knowledge to replicate these lost private functions accurately with the passage of time and the appearance of potentially useful technological innovations any losses resulting from this lack of knowledge increase these losses are an anticipated drain on future income a decision maker with a long time horizon and a secure position a low discount rate would find these prospective losses weighing heavily in his calculations and might never take the first step beyond capitalism a less fortunately placed decision maker facing domestic and foreign threats may find that current revenue requirements for internal and external defense and for payments made to supporters force him to mortgage the future for increased current revenue this decision maker may be tempted by socialism not for any ethical or political reasons but merely for the quick revenue returns it offers

how much is too much an investigation of the effect of the number of choice sets context dependence and the choice of bid vectors in choice experiments in a split sample design we examine how the number of choice sets design of the first choice set context dependence and the choice of attribute levels in the cost attribute affect the precision in the elicited preferences in otherwise completely identical choice experiment surveys these issues are investigated for swedish households marginal willingness to pay to reduce power outages our results indicate that neither the number of choice sets nor the design of the first choice set has a significant impact on estimated marginal willingness to pay while the effect was significant for the additive scaling of the cost vector at the end of the article we discuss the implications of our results on future developments and applications of choice experiments

estimating the firm s labor supply curve in a new monopsony framework school teachers in missouri in the context of certain dynamic models it is possible to infer the elasticity of labor supply to the firm from the elasticity of the quit rate with respect to the wage using this property we estimate the average labor supply elasticity to public school districts in missouri we leverage the plausibly exogenous variation in prenegotiated district salary schedules to instrument for actual salary these estimates imply a labor supply elasticity of about 3 7 suggesting that school districts possess significant market power the presence of monopsony power in this teacher labor market may be partially explained by its institutional features

incentive incompatibility and starting point bias in iterative valuation questions we test for incentive incompatibility and starting point bias to describe the effects of iterative valuation questions on willingness to pay we compare double triple and multiplebounded models with data from two surveys with similar designs of the valuation questions we find that incentive incompatibility is present in both sets of data and starting point bias is present in one the efficiency of the willingness to pay estimate is improved in only one set of data the potential loss from using iterative questions without controlling for both incentive incompatibility and starting point bias is biased willingness topay estimates

preference anomalies preference elicitation and the discovered preference hypothesis there is wide ranging evidence much of it deriving from economics experiments of anomalies in behaviour that challenge standard preference theories this paper explores the implications of these anomalies for preference elicitation methods because methods that are used to inform public policy such as contingent valuation are based on standard preference theories their validity may be called into question by the anomaly data however on a new interpretation these anomalies do not contradict standard theory but are errors in stated preference that can be expected to disappear as people become more experienced in relevant decision environments we explore the evidence for this interpretation and what implications follow for preference elicitation methodology

unions and hospitals some unresolved issues abstract this article investigates the impact of unions on the wages of hospital workers our ols findings agree with previous ols studies unions increase registered nurses rns wages by five percent and by about eight to ten percent for other hospital workers by contrast we find after correcting for selectivity bias in hospital unionization status a direct union effect of about twenty percent on rn wages and in excess of thirty percent on wages of other hospital workers while the results based on selectivity bias adjustments make us uneasy we do not reject them out of hand we also find indirect union effects up to five percent by other unionized occupations within a hospital and up to ten percent by other unionized hospitals in the local labor market prospective reimbursement programs have a negative impact on the wages of hospital workers but are only significant for non unionized occupations our three empirical tests of monopsony all reject the view that monopsony is a factor in hospital wage setting even considering the large union effects based on selectivity bias adjustment we conclude that unions have been a minor contributor to hospital cost inflation

labor market monopsony there has been a renewed interest in monopsony in labor markets in recent years that includes both the traditional static approach to monopsony ably reviewed by boal and ransom 1997 and the new approach to monopsony with more attention paid to dynamic issues developed in detail by manning 2003 the articles presented in this supplement highlight both approaches and illustrate the range of labor market settings in which the exercise of monopsony power may be important the first use of the term monopsony in economics is widely attributed to robinson 1969 robinson conceived of monopsony as analogous to monopoly whereas monopoly refers to the case of a single seller confronted in a market by many buyers monopsony refers to the case of a single buyer confronted in a market by many sellers just as the monopolist faces a downward sloping demand curve for his product and

reliability of individual valuations of public and private goods choice consistency response time and preference refinement we examined the reliability of a large set of paired comparison value judgments involving public goods private goods and sums of money as respondents progressed through a random sequence of paired choices they were each given their response time decreased and they became more consistent apparently fine tuning their responses suggesting that respondents tend to begin a hypothetical value exercise with relatively imprecise preferences and that experience in expressing preference helps reduce that imprecision reliability was greater for private than for public good choices and greater for choices between a good and a monetary amount than for choices between two goods however the reliability for public good choices was only slightly lower than for the private goods published by elsevier b v

underpaid or overpaid wage analysis for nurses using job and worker attributes the nursing labor market presents an apparent puzzle hospitals report chronic shortages yet standard wage analysis shows that nursing wages have increased over time and greatly exceed those received by other college educated women this paper addresses this puzzle data from the current population survey cps are matched with detailed job content descriptors from the occupational information network o net nursing jobs require higher levels of skills and more difficult working conditions than do jobs for other college educated workers a standard cps only wage regression shows a registered nurse rn wage advantage of 22 log points compared to a pooled male female group of college educated workers control for o net job attributes reduces the rn gap to 08 while an arguably preferable nonparametric estimator produces a wage gap estimate close to zero we conclude that nurses receive compensation close to long run opportunity costs narrowing if not resolving the rn wage shortage puzzle

testing for employer monopsony in turn of the century coal mining isolated company towns are often cited as likely examples of labor monopsony this article tests for monopsony power by estimating inverse labor supply elasticities using a county level panel dataset on nonunion west virginia coal mining from 1897 to 1932 the model specification incorporates dynamics in such a way that an estimate of the gap between marginal revenue product and the wage can easily be computed as a weighted average of short and long run inverse elasticities modest estimated short run inverse elasticities and very small long run inverse elasticities imply that coal operators enjoyed little if any monopsony power over their workers

demand for beef from cattle administered growth hormones or fed genetically modified corn a comparison of consumers in france germany the united kingdom and the united states we compare consumer valuations of beef ribeye steaks from cattle produced without growth hormones or genetically modified corn in france germany the united kingdom and the united states results suggest that french consumers place a higher value on beef from cattle that have not been administered added growth hormones than u s consumers however valuations of non hormone treated beef are statistically indistinguishable across germany the united kingdom and the united states results also suggest that european consumers place a much higher value on beef from cattle that have not been fed genetically modified corn than u s consumers copyright 2003 oxford university press

testing choice experiment for benefit transfer with preference heterogeneity benefit transfer is a cost effective method for estimating the value of environmental goods that relies on information obtained in previous studies the multiattribute approach of choice experiments should provide advantages in terms of benefit transfer allowing differences in environmental improvements between sites as well as differences in socioeconomic and attitude characteristics between respondent populations this article investigates the capability of choice experiment method to be used in environmental benefit transfer when a random parameters approach is used to allow for preference heterogeneity we find that the inclusion of respondents taste heterogeneity reduces the magnitude of the transfer error

choice certainty and consistency in repeated choice experiments the main objective of this study is to examine how repeated choice affects preference learning in stated preference experiments we test different hypotheses related to preference learning by analyzing response patterns and asking respondents in a choice experiment to report their experienced certainty when going through the choice tasks in a split sample test we show that follow up choice certainty questions are procedural invariant the self reported certainty results indicate that learning occurs but econometric testing procedures do not identify any significant impact of learning effects on parameter estimates or variance across choice tasks additional tests of choice consistency suggest that preferences in the choice experiment are stable and coherent

fairness and frictions the impact of unequal raises on quit behavior we analyze how separations responded to arbitrary differences in own and peer wages at a large us retailer regression discontinuity estimates imply large causal effects of own wages on separations and on quits in particular however this own wage response could reflect comparisons either to market wages or to peer wages estimates using peer wage discontinuities show large peer wage effects and imply the own wage separation response mostly reflects peer comparisons the peer effect is driven by comparisons with higher paid peers suggesting concerns about fairness separations appear fairly insensitive when raises are similar across peers suggesting search frictions and monopsony are relevant in this low wage sector

reference dependence effects on wta and wtp value functions and their disparity in this study we investigate two reference dependence effects in a choice experiment the first is the effect of the well known distinction between gains and losses the second is the effect of changing the reference value on willingness to pay wtp and willingness to accept wta the latter has to our knowledge not been studied before we hypothesize that there are differences between wta and wtp and that both value functions and their disparity are affected by the absolute value of the reference point we test our hypotheses using a choice experiment with trade offs between changes in flood probabilities and costs the choice experiments elicit wtp and wta using two flood probability reference values yielding four separate value functions our findings show that a substantial wta wtp disparity exists and that this disparity increases when moving away from the reference point also both wta and wtp value functions are affected by the flood probability reference value and the wta wtp disparity increases when the flood probability reference point increases both findings suggest that welfare effects caused by changes in public good provision depend not only on the direction of change loss aversion but also the reference value moreover our results show that the latter effect is larger for losses than for gains we introduce the concept of reference point updating as a possible explanation for these findings

monopsony power in the market for nurses estimates are presented of the inverse elasticity of supply of nursing services to the individual hospital a quantity which is a natural measure of employer market power the estimates corresponding to employment changes taking place over one year are quite high in the neighborhood of 0 79 and even for changes taking place over three years are substantial in the neighborhood of 0 26 the estimates do not significantly differ for hospitals in major metropolitan areas and do not depend very sensitively on the assumed form of the oligopsony equilibrium this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

gender specific starting point bias in choice experiments evidence from an empirical study abstract in this paper we test whether preferences and willingness to pay estimates obtained in a choice experiment study are susceptible to starting point bias as is often the case in dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies on the basis of a multinomial probit model we find that preferences are indeed susceptible to starting point bias in a split sample design our results suggest that varying the price levels displayed in a so called instructional choice set presented prior to the actual preference eliciting choice sets significantly impacts respondents preferences and willingness to pay for protecting danish nature areas from new motorway development in particular our results show that the bias is gender specific only female respondents are significantly affected results further reveal that the impact of the starting point bias decays as respondents evaluate more and more choice sets this supports the discovered preference hypothesis and on the basis of this we suggest a number of ways to potentially mitigate the starting point bias

monopsony in the low wage labor market evidence from minimum nurse staffing regulations this paper provides direct evidence on the extent of monopsony power in the low wage labor market by estimating the firm level elasticity of labor supply for nurse aides in the long term care nursing home industry using exogenous variation in hiring induced by the passage of a state minimum nurse staffing law i find that facilities initially out of compliance with the new law did not have to raise their wage offers relative to their competitors in order to hire more nurses while this is consistent with perfect competition in simple monopsony models of the labor market i discuss how the results may be more ambiguous in more complicated models

monopsony mobility and sex differences in pay missouri school teachers we examine the sex differences in the pay of school teachers in missouri in missouri school districts pay is determined by a salary schedule that maps teaching experience and education level of an individual to a salary level in spite of this apparently mechanical rule for determining pay female teachers earn less than male teachers after controlling for experience and education we explore how such a difference could arise from differential job mobility and find some evidence to support this idea however within district differences in pay are a more important source of differences in pay between men and women

the elasticity of labor supply at the establishment level monopsonistic wage setting power requires that the supply of labor directed toward individual establishments is upward sloping this study utilizes institutional features to identify the supply curve the elasticity of labor supply is estimated using data for the norwegian teacher labor market in a period where the only variation in the wage level was determined centrally and with information on whether there is excess demand or not at the school level in fixed effects models the supply elasticity faced by individual schools is estimated to about 1 4 and is in the range 1 0 1 9 in different model specification

controlling starting point bias in double bounded contingent valuation surveys in this paper we study starting point bias in double bounded contingent valuation surveys this phenomenon arise in applications that use multiple valuation questions indeed response to follow up valuation questions may be influenced by the bid proposed in the initial valuation question previous research have been conducted in order to control for such an effect however they find that efficiency gains are lost when we control for undesirable response effects relative to a single dichotomous choice question contrary to these results we propose a way to control for starting point bias in double bounded questions with gains in efficiency

the economic case for international labour standards this paper explores the economic case for international labour standards granting workers rights of free association and collective bargaining confers both static and dynamic economic efficiencies static efficiencies refer to one time gains from improvements in economic practice dynamic efficiencies refer to gains from improvements to the growth path resulting from a shift away from a low road development path to a high road path these efficiencies raise wages employment and output in developing countries and they can also benefit workers in developed countries labour standards are an institutional mechanism for raising the quality of growth in both developing and developed countries in this sense they are a win win institution

on visible choice sets and scope sensitivity abstract in this paper we argue that the burgeoning empirical debate over scope sensitivity within contingent valuation studies is fundamentally incomplete in that it has neglected a systematic examination of certain effects of study design upon observed scope sensitivity in particular we highlight the fact that in certain study designs the choice set initially offered or visible to respondents is changed in a stepwise manner as they progress through a valuation exercise while other designs involve advance disclosure regarding the full extent of the final visible choice set prior to any choices or values being elicited the issue of changes in the visible choice set is alluded to by smith j environ econom manage 22 1 71 who identifies this as a primary challenge to kahneman and knetsch s j environ econom manage 22 1 57 well known experimental results kahneman and knetsch contend that it seems highly implausible that this minor procedural change would significantly alter results p 61 but do not test this assertion we present experimental and field tests of the impact upon contingent values of varying the visible choice set through stepwise and advance disclosure these dimensions of design are interacted with changes in the order in which nested goods are presented bottom up versus top down when a stepwise disclosure procedure is adopted the observed scope sensitivity is substantially and significantly affected by the order in which goods are presented but such procedural variance is not observed within advance disclosure designs conjectures regarding the origin and implications of such findings are presented

is there monopsony in the labor market evidence from a natural experiment 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

monopsony power and relative wages in the labor market for nurses this paper examines the thesis that monopsony power is an important determinant of wages in nursing labor markets using data from the 1985 93 current population surveys measures of relative nurse non nurse wage rates for 252 labor markets are constructed contrary to predictions from the monopsony model no positive relationship exists between relative nursing wages and hospital density or market size nor is support found for the presence of monopsony power based on evidence on union wage premiums slopes of experience profiles or the mix of rn to total hospital employment

minimum wages for ronald mcdonald monopsonies a theory of monopsonistic competition recent empirical work on the effects of minimum wages has called into question the conventional wisdom that minimum wages invariably reduce employment we develop a model of monopsonistic competition with free entry to analyse the effects of minimum wages and our predictions fit the empirical results closely under monopsonistic competition we find that a rise in the minimum wage raises employment per firm causes firm exit and may increase or reduce industry employment minimum wages increase welfare if they raise industry employment but welfare effects are ambiguous if employment falls

choke price bias in choice experiments this paper reports on the results from a split sample choice experiment where the effect of changing the maximum level of the cost attribute is investigated the hypothesis was that changing the maximum price level would either give rise to an income effect or have no effect on consumers preferences this was tested in the framework of a valuation study of different quality characteristics of minced pork the data was analysed using a mixed logit error component model which accounts for correlation in the unobserved part of the utility results suggest that the size of the maximum price level does matter and that changing the maximum price level has a statistically significant effect on both the general preferences structure and the wtp estimates hence researchers should be very careful when defining not only the range of the price attribute but also the maximum level of the price attribute

oligopsony and monopsonistic competition in labor markets we argue that models of oligopsony or monopsonistic competition provide insights and explanation for many empirical phenomena in labor markets using a simple model with job differentiation and preference heterogeneity we illustrate how such models can be employed to explain the existence of wage dispersion the persistence of labor market discrimination market failures in the provision of training and the anomalous employment effects of minimum wages

the drivers of income inequality in rich countries rising income inequality has recently come centre stage as a core societal concern for rich countries the diagnosis of the forces driving inequality upwards and their relative importance remains hotly contested notably with respect to the roles of globalization versus technology and of market forces versus institutions and policy choices this survey provides a critical review and synthesis of recent research the focus is on income inequality across the entire distribution rather than only on what has been happening at the very top we pay particular attention to including what has been learned from the analysis of micro data to ensuring that the coverage is not unduly us centric and to analyses of the interrelations between the different drivers of inequality the marked differences in inequality trends across countries and time periods reflect how global economic forces such as globalisation and technological change have interacted with differing national contexts and institutions major analytical challenges stand in the way of a consensus emerging on the relative importance of different drivers in how income inequality has evolved in recent decades

strengthening state capabilities the role of financial incentives in the call to public service we study a recent recruitment drive for public sector positions in mexico different salaries were announced randomly across recruitment sites and job offers were subsequently randomized screening relied on exams designed to measure applicants intellectual ability personality and motivation this allows the first experimental estimates of i the role of financial incentives in attracting a larger and more qualified pool of applicants ii the elasticity of the labor supply facing the employer and iii the role of job attributes distance attractiveness of the municipal environment in helping fill vacancies as well as the role of wages in helping fill positions in less attractive municipalities a theoretical model guides each stage of the empirical inquiry we find that higher wages attract more able applicants as measured by their iq personality and proclivity towards public sector work i e we find no evidence of adverse selection effects on motivation higher wage offers also increased acceptance rates implying a labor supply elasticity of around 2 and some degree of monopsony power distance and worse municipal characteristics strongly decrease acceptance rates but higher wages help bridge the recruitment gap in worse municipalities

the union impact on hospital wages and fringe benefits this paper uses 1977 data from a national probability sample of 1 200 hospitals to estimate the effect of unions on wages and fringe benefits in four occupations registered nurses practical nurses secretaries and housekeepers the results show that unionization has a significant impact on wages that increases with the length of time collective bargaining has been in effect at the individual hospital the overall wage effect of unions is about 8 percent for both types of nurses and 11 to 12 percent for secretaries and housekeepers employed in hospitals the authors also estimate an equation for hospital wide fringe benefits which shows that such benefits are positively related to the percent of full time employees in the four occupations covered by union contracts

dynamic learning and context dependence in sequential attribute based stated preference valuation questions a hybrid stated preference model is presented that combines the referendum contingent valuation response format with an experimentally designed set of attributes a sequence of valuation questions is asked to a random sample in a mailout mail back format econometric analysis shows greater discrimination between alternatives in the final choice in the sequence and the vector of preference parameters shifts lead and lag choice sets have a structural influence on current choices and unobserved factors induce positive correlation across the responses these results indicate that people learn about their preferences for attributebased environmental goods by comparing attribute levels across choice sets

learning design contingent valuation ldcv noaa guidelines preference learning and coherent arbitrariness we extend the contingent valuation cv method to test three differing conceptions of individuals preferences as either i a priori well formed or readily divined and revealed through a single dichotomous choice question as per the noaa cv guidelines k arrow r solow p r portney e e leamer r radner h schuman report of the noaa panel on contingent valuation fed reg 58 1993 4601 4614 ii learned or discovered through a process of repetition and experience j a list does market experience eliminate market anomalies q j econ 2003 41 72 c r plott rational individual behaviour in markets and social choice processes the discovered preference hypothesis in k arrow e colombatto m perleman c schmidt eds rational foundations of economic behaviour macmillan london st martin s new york 1996 pp 225 250 iii internally coherent but strongly influenced by some initial arbitrary anchor d ariely g loewenstein d prelec coherent arbitrariness stable demand curves without stable preferences q j econ 118 1 2003 73 105 findings reject both the first and last of these conceptions in favour of a model in which preferences converge towards standard expectations through a process of repetition and learning in doing so we show that such a learning design cv method overturns the stylised facts of bias and anchoring within the double bound dichotomous choice elicitation format

the influence of task complexity on consumer choice a latent class model of decision strategy switching the literature indicating that person context and task specific factors cause consumers to utilize different decision strategies has generally failed to affect the specification of choice models used by practitioners and academics alike who still tend to assume an utility maximizing omniscient indefatigable consumer this article 1 introduces decision strategy selection within a maintained compensatory framework into aggregate choice models via latent classes which arise because of task complexity 2 it demonstrates that within an experimental choice task the model reflects changing aggregate preferences as choice complexity changes and as the task progresses the import of these findings for current practice model interpretation and future research needs is examined

monopsony in the labor market this paper surveys recent theoretical and empirical research on monopsony in labor markets broadly defined as upward sloping labor supply to an employer we compare older monopsony models based on small numbers of employers with newer models based on labor market frictions such as moving costs and search we also compare older econometric approaches that focus on static wage concentration relationships with newer approaches that focus on dynamics our review of empirical estimates suggests that monopsony power based on small numbers of employers is probably rare but occasionally large while monopsony power based on frictions is probably widespread but small on average

changing with the tide semiparametric estimation of preference dynamics we contrast the discovered preference hypothesis against the theory of coherent arbitrariness in a split sample stated choice experiment on flood risk exposure a semiparametric local multinomial logit model is developed as an alternative to the swait and louviere 1993 test procedure controlling for preference dynamics within and between samples the proposed model supports the discovered preference hypothesis by means of a decaying starting point bias the swait and louviere 1993 test procedure reaches a different conclusion it rejects the assumption of stable preferences but most preference dynamics tend to be smoothed out causing a more erratic pattern of preference dynamics

coherent arbitrariness stable demand curves without stable preferences economic theories of valuation generally assume that prices of commodities and assets are derived from underlying fundamental values for example in finance theory asset prices are believed to reflect the market estimate of the discounted present value of the asset s payoff stream in labor theory the supply of labor is established by the tradeoff between the desire for consumption and the displeasure of work finally and most importantly for this chapter consumer microeconomics assumes that the demand curves for consumer products chocolates cds movies vacations drugs and so forth can be ultimately traced to the valuation of pleasures that consumers anticipate receiving from these products because it is difficult as a rule to measure fundamental values directly empirical tests of economic theory typically examine whether the effects of changes in circumstances on valuations are consistent with theoretical prediction for example whether labor supply responds appropriately to a change in the wage rate whether compensated demand curves for commodities are downward sloping or whether stock prices respond in the predicted way to share repurchases however such comparative static relationships are a necessary but not sufficient condition for fundamental valuation e g summers 1986 becker 1962 was perhaps the first to make this point explicitly when he observed that consumers choosing commodity bundles randomly from their budget set would nevertheless produce downward sloping demand curves

choice experiments site similarity and benefits transfer choice experiments are designed to account for variations in environmental resources and site characteristics as well as potential implications of these variations for willingness to pay as a result choice experiment results may be well suited for benefits transfer it is unclear however whether the flexibility of choice experiments renders the similarity of study and transfer sites less critical for transfer validity drawing from identical choice experiments conducted in different rhode island communities this model assesses the extent to which error in function based benefits transfer is related to the similarity of communities across a variety of observable dimensions results suggest that site similarity at least across some dimensions influences the validity of choice experiment benefits transfers however the use of some measures of similarity as indicators of transfer error may provide misleading results

wage bargaining and monopsony this paper identifies three possible outcomes of higher relative firm bargaining power in a unionized firm facing an upward sloping labor supply curve the conventional regime with reduced wage and higher employment corresponds to firm bargaining power below a certain critical value a supply constrained regime where increased firm bargaining power reduces both wages and employment occurs when the bargaining power is above another critical level a novel result is that we identify a third regime with firm bargaining power between these critical levels where changes in relative bargaining power does not affect wages and employment

monopsony power pay structure and training although interest in monopsonistic influences on labor market outcomes has revived in recent years only a few empirical studies provide direct evidence on this topic in this article the authors analyze the effect of monopsony power on pay structure using a direct measure of labor market thinness the authors find evidence of monopsony power as firms facing fewer local competitors offer lower wages to skilled labor and trainees but not to unskilled labor the findings have important implications for the economic theory of training as most recent models assume monopsonistic pay setting for skilled labor but not for trainees

monopsony power in migrant labor markets evidence from the united arab emirates by exploiting a reform in the united arab emirates that relaxed restrictions on employer transitions we provide new estimates of the monopsony power of firms over migrant workers our results show that the reform increased incumbent migrants earnings and firm retention this occurs despite an increase in employer transitions and is driven by a fall in country exits while the outcomes of incumbents improved the reform decreased demand for new migrants and lowered their earnings these results are consistent with a model of monopsony in which firms face upward sloping labor supply curves for both new recruits in source countries and incumbent migrants

teacher mobility responses to wage changes evidence from a quasi natural experiment low mobility responses to wage changes imply rents associated with existing employment relationships for example continued employment after a wage cut all else equal reflects rents in the hand of the worker at the outset and symmetrically voluntary quits after a