Low-wage markets are traditionally viewed as competitive, and the possibility of strategic behavior by employers is dismissed. However, such behavior is not impossible. This paper investigates the possibility of tacit collusion by low-wage employers while setting wages. A game-theoretic...

Because it is differentiated from other employers, the U.S. military enjoys some monopsony power. After reviewing existing estimates of the elasticity of labor supplied to the military, we obtain new estimates for the Army and Navy covering the period from 1998-2007. We employ a control function...

In the context of certain general equilibrium search 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. We use this framework to estimate the elasticity of labor supply for men and women workers at a chain of...

In the context of certain dynamic models of monopsony, 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...

This paper estimates the impacts of labor-mobility restrictions on job-transitions and wages in the postbellum U.S. south. In particuliar, I estimate the effects of changes in criminal fines, collected from BLS commission labor reports, charged for "enticement" (offers made to workers already...

A variety of 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, even in labor markets that are textbook examples of monopsony. We use an exogenous change in wages at...

This paper shows, using data from both the US and the UK, that average plant size is larger in denser markets. However, many popular theories of agglomeration spillovers, cost advantages and improved match quality predict that establishments should be smaller in cities. The paper proposes a...

I estimate the relative magnitudes of worker switching costs and whether the employer switching of experienced engineers responds to outside wage offers. Institutional features imply that voluntary turnover dominates switching in the market for Swedish engineers from 1970 to 1990. I use data on...

Because it is differentiated from other employers, the U.S. military enjoys some monopsony power. After reviewing existing estimates of the elasticity of labor supplied to the military, we obtain new estimates for the Army and Navy covering the period from 1998-2007. We employ a control function...

In the context of certain dynamic models of monopsony, 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...