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The Cyclical Behaviour of Employers' Monopsony Power and Workers' Wages

Author

Listed:
  • Hirsch, Boris

    (Leuphana University Lüneburg)

  • Jahn, Elke J.

    (University of Bayreuth)

  • Schnabel, Claus

    (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg)

Abstract

This paper investigates the behaviour of employers' monopsony power and workers' wages over the business cycle. Using German administrative linked employer-employee data for the years 1985-2010 and an estimation framework based on duration models, we construct a time series of the firm-level labour supply elasticity and estimate its relationship to the aggregate unemployment rate. In line with theory, we find that firms possess more monopsony power during economic downturns, which shows to be robust to controlling for time-invariant unobserved worker heterogeneity. We also document that cyclical changes in workers' entry wages are of similar magnitude as those predicted under monopsonistic wage setting, suggesting that monopsony power should not be neglected when analysing wage cyclicality.

Suggested Citation

  • Hirsch, Boris & Jahn, Elke J. & Schnabel, Claus, 2013. "The Cyclical Behaviour of Employers' Monopsony Power and Workers' Wages," IZA Discussion Papers 7776, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7776
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), 2011. "Handbook of Labor Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 4, number 5.
    2. Herbert Brücker & Elke J. Jahn, 2011. "Migration and Wage‐setting: Reassessing the Labor Market Effects of Migration," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 113, pages 286-317, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Briggs Depew & Peter Norlander & Todd A. Sørensen, 2017. "Inter-firm mobility and return migration patterns of skilled guest workers," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 30(2), pages 681-721, April.
    2. Ronald Bachmann & Hanna Frings, 2017. "Monopsonistic competition, low-wage labour markets, and minimum wages – An empirical analysis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(51), pages 5268-5286, November.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    monopsony power; business cycle; entry wages;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J42 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Monopsony; Segmented Labor Markets
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

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