Monopsony Power in Higher Education: A Tale of Two Tracks

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Goolsbee, Austan; Syverson, Chad
• 署名单位: University of Chicago
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF LABOR ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0734-306X
• DOI: 10.1086/726720
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: S257-S290
• 关键词: labor-market evidence; seniority; GENDER; FIRMS; wages; pay; COMPETITION; sex

摘要

This paper measures the degree of monopsony power in the US higher-education labor market by using school-specific labor demand instruments to directly estimate the residual labor supply curves facing individual universities. The results indicate that schools have significant monopsony power over tenure-track faculty but face perfectly elastic residual labor supply curves for non-tenure-track faculty. There is some evidence for three sources of monopsony power often discussed in the literature-employer concentration, search frictions/job-switching costs, and differentiated jobs. The results also suggest that monopsony over tenure-track faculty may have contributed to the trend toward hiring more non-tenure-track faculty.