Labor

Kroger and Albertsons say they need to merge to compete with Walmart. Claire Kelloway argues that what they really want is Walmart’s monopsony power, and permitting mergers on these grounds will only harm suppliers, workers, and consumers.

In new research, Sabien Dobbelaere, Grace McCormack, Daniel Prinz, and Sándor Sóvágó find that mergers negatively impact labor market outcomes. Mergers result in job losses, and the earnings of workers who lose their jobs don’t recover for several years on average. The authors find these negative consequences are more likely attributable to the restructuring of labor forces than subsequent firm market power.

Do labor markets in Europe or the United States and Canada experience more monopsony power? In a new paper published in the University of Chicago Law Review, Satoshi Araki, Andrea Bassanini, Andrew Green, Luca Marcolin, and Cristina Volpin provide comparisons of monopsony power between the two regions, documenting similar levels of concentration across labor markets despite generally stronger protections in Europe. They also discuss the effects of such concentration on employment and wages, ending with potential regulatory reforms to address these issues.

American antitrust regulators have recently taken aim at noncompete clauses. They argue that noncompetes suppress labor bargaining power and thus wages. The Italian labor market differs from its American counterpart in its rigid protections for labor, but the use of noncompetes in Italy occur at about the same rate as in the United States and shows a correlation with lower wages for workers whose noncompete clauses are unjustified because their jobs require little training and do not grant access to trade secrets. The evidence from Italy suggests that better regulation of noncompetes and informing workers of their rights is justified on the whole.

Scholars and policymakers have put much faith into the prospect of internet connectivity catalyzing development in low- and middle-income countries. In new...

The gender pay gap is a well-documented phenomenon in global labor markets, but this gap does not seem to apply to the...

The literature on globalization’s impact on women’s workforce participation generally takes a positive outlook but still produces mixed results. In their research,...

Decades of progress have seen greater opportunities for women in the workplace, but sizable gender gaps still remain. Stefania Albanesi, Claudia Olivetti...

A growing literature on income inequality and labor earnings has overlooked the contribution of disparities in hours worked. In new research with...

Using the 2019 BB&T-SunTrust merger as a case study, Laura Beltrán argues that contemporary antitrust policy, based on the Consumer Welfare Standard,...