{"title":"Monopsony in spatial equilibrium","authors":"Matthew E. Kahn , Joseph Tracy","doi":"10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2023.103956","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><span>An emerging labor economics literature examines the consequences of firms exercising market power in local labor markets. The extent of this market power is likely to vary across local labor markets. In choosing what local labor market to live and work in, workers tradeoff wages, </span>house prices<span><span> and local amenities. Building on the Rosen/Roback spatial equilibrium model, we investigate how the existence of local monopsony power affects the cross-sectional spatial distribution of house prices across cities. We find that house prices decline with increases in the employment concentration in the local market. For renters, this offsets roughly 70 percent of the estimated monopsony wage effect and shifts part of the costs of monopsony to homeowners. We find evidence that </span>collective bargaining and minimum wages limit the extent of capitalization of monopsony power into house prices.</span></p></div>","PeriodicalId":48196,"journal":{"name":"Regional Science and Urban Economics","volume":"104 ","pages":"Article 103956"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Regional Science and Urban Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166046223000911","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
An emerging labor economics literature examines the consequences of firms exercising market power in local labor markets. The extent of this market power is likely to vary across local labor markets. In choosing what local labor market to live and work in, workers tradeoff wages, house prices and local amenities. Building on the Rosen/Roback spatial equilibrium model, we investigate how the existence of local monopsony power affects the cross-sectional spatial distribution of house prices across cities. We find that house prices decline with increases in the employment concentration in the local market. For renters, this offsets roughly 70 percent of the estimated monopsony wage effect and shifts part of the costs of monopsony to homeowners. We find evidence that collective bargaining and minimum wages limit the extent of capitalization of monopsony power into house prices.
期刊介绍:
Regional Science and Urban Economics facilitates and encourages high-quality scholarship on important issues in regional and urban economics. It publishes significant contributions that are theoretical or empirical, positive or normative. It solicits original papers with a spatial dimension that can be of interest to economists. Empirical papers studying causal mechanisms are expected to propose a convincing identification strategy.