eBook

Monopsony in Motion

Alan Manning

2013,2005

Overview

What happens if an employer cuts wages by one cent? Much of labor economics is built on the assumption that all the workers will quit immediately. Here, Alan Manning mounts a systematic challenge to the standard model of perfect competition.Monopsony in Motionstands apart by analyzing labor markets from the real-world perspective that employers have significant market (or monopsony) power over their workers. Arguing that this power derives from frictions in the labor market that make it time-consuming and costly for workers to change jobs, Manning re-examines much of labor economics based on this alternative and equally plausible assumption. The book addresses the theoretical implications of monopsony and presents a wealth of empirical evidence. Our understanding of the distribution of wages, unemployment, and human capital can all be improved by recognizing that employers have some monopsony power over their workers. Also considered are policy issues including the minimum wage, equal pay legislation, and caps on working hours. In a monopsonistic labor market, concludes Manning, the \"free\" market can no longer be sustained as an ideal and labor economists need to be more open-minded in their evaluation of labor market policies.Monopsony in Motionwill represent for some a new fundamental text in the advanced study of labor economics, and for others, an invaluable alternative perspective that henceforth must be taken into account in any serious consideration of the subject.

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Subject: Bilateral monopoly / Business / BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economics / General / BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Labor / Compensating differential / Competition / Cost curve / Cultural lag / Demand curve / Demand For Labor / Downside risk / Dynamic programming / Economic interventionism / Economic surplus / Economics / Efficiency wage / Elasticity of substitution / Employment / Envelope theorem / Excess supply / Exhaustion / Externality / Frictional unemployment / Gender pay gap / Human capital / Indifference curve / Inequality of bargaining power / Involuntary unemployment / Job security / Labor / Labor & Industrial Relations / Labor demand / Labor economics / Labor market / Labour power / Labour supply / Layoff / Marginal cost / Marginal product / Marginal rate of substitution / Market failure / Market power / Maximum wage / Minimum wage / Monopsonies / Monopsony / Natural rate of unemployment / Negative binomial distribution / Neoclassical economics / Oligopoly / Oligopsony / Opportunity cost / Ordinary least squares / Partial equilibrium / Perfect competition / POLITICAL SCIENCE / POLITICAL SCIENCE / Labor & Industrial Relations / Price elasticity of supply / Production function / Productivity / Profit (economics) / Profit maximization / Rate of exploitation / Reservation wage / Risk aversion / Salary / Search theory / Shortage / Spillover effect / Stylized fact / Supply (economics) / Supply shock / Tax / Trade union / Unemployment / Unemployment in the United States / Union wage premium / Utility / Wage / Wage compression / Wages / Working poor
• ISBN: 0691123284, 9780691123288, 9781400850679, 1400850673