Labor
Labor Markets Are the New Frontier for Competition Policy
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.
What the Practice of Noncompetes in Italy Says About the Current American Debate
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.
Mobile Internet Is Changing Employment in Developing Countries, but Not Always as Expected
Scholars and policymakers have put much faith into the prospect of internet connectivity catalyzing development in low- and middle-income countries. In new research, Pinelopi...
Are There Really Gender Pay Differences in the CEO Labor Market?
The gender pay gap is a well-documented phenomenon in global labor markets, but this gap does not seem to apply to the pay of...
Globalization’s Uneven Impact on Women’s Occupational Attainment
The literature on globalization’s impact on women’s workforce participation generally takes a positive outlook but still produces mixed results. In their research, Yoav Roll,...
How Women in the Workplace Has Changed Over the Last 50 Years
Decades of progress have seen greater opportunities for women in the workplace, but sizable gender gaps still remain. Stefania Albanesi, Claudia Olivetti and Barbara...
To Understand Earnings Inequality, We Need To Study Hours Inequality
A growing literature on income inequality and labor earnings has overlooked the contribution of disparities in hours worked. In new research with Lara Vivian,...
How the Consumer Welfare Standard Propagates Gender and Racial Inequalities
Using the 2019 BB&T-SunTrust merger as a case study, Laura Beltrán argues that contemporary antitrust policy, based on the Consumer Welfare Standard, fails to...
The NCAA Goes After College Athletes’ NIL Money—Here are the Antitrust Implications for Workers and Consumers
Having lost in the Supreme Court on student-athlete academic benefits, the NCAA has signaled a continuing attempt to suppress competition in the rapidly growing...
How Antitrust Can Better Regulate Thin Labor Markets
Thin markets, characterized by a small number of participants and low transaction volumes, create particular problems for antitrust enforcers. Hiba Hafiz explores the incoherent,...
