Foreign Competition, Market Power, and Wage Inequality

1995 ◽  
Vol 110 (4) ◽  
pp. 1075-1110 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. J. Borjas ◽  
V. A. Ramey
Keyword(s):  
Market Power ◽  
Wage Inequality ◽  
Foreign Competition

scholarly journals Can Market Power Influence Employment, Wage Inequality and Growth?

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Bucci ◽  
Fabio Fiorillo ◽  
Stefano Staffolani
Keyword(s):  
Market Power ◽  
Wage Inequality

Mergers

2021 ◽  
pp. 76-90
Author(s):  
Eric A. Posner
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Market Power ◽  
Wage Inequality ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Market Effects ◽  
Antitrust Laws ◽  
Economic Stagnation ◽  
The Government ◽  
Private Litigation

Recent research indicates that labor market power has contributed to wage inequality and economic stagnation. Although the antitrust laws prohibit firms from restricting competition in labor markets as in product markets, the government does little to address the labor market problem, and private litigation has been rare and mostly unsuccessful. This is a particular problem for mergers, which the government has never reviewed for labor market effects. One reason is that the analytic methods for evaluating labor market power in antitrust contexts are less sophisticated than the legal rules used to judge product market power. To remedy this asymmetry, the government can draw on insights from labor economics and use tools that have been developed for measuring labor market concentration.

scholarly journals Can Market Power Influence Employment, Wage Inequality and Growth?

2003 ◽  
Vol 54 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 129-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Bucci ◽  
Fabio Fiorillo ◽  
Stefano Staffolani
Keyword(s):  
Market Power ◽  
Wage Inequality

scholarly journals History and Turning the Antitrust Page

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Brian R. Cheffins
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Market Power ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
Chicago School ◽  
Foreign Competition ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Agent Of Change ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Intellectual Movement

Present-day advocates of antitrust reform referred to as “New Brandeisians” have invoked history in pressing the case for change. The New Brandeisians bemoan the upending of a mid-twentieth-century “golden age” of antitrust by an intellectual movement known as the Chicago School. In fact, mid-twentieth-century enforcement of antitrust was uneven and large corporations exercised substantial market power. The Chicago School also was not as decisive an agent of change as the New Brandeisians suggest. Doubts about the efficacy of government regulation and concerns about foreign competition did much to foster the late twentieth-century counterrevolution that antitrust experienced.

scholarly journals Are US Industries Becoming More Concentrated?*

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 697-743 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gustavo Grullon ◽  
Yelena Larkin ◽  
Roni Michaely
Keyword(s):  
Mergers And Acquisitions ◽  
Market Power ◽  
Product Market ◽  
Market Concentration ◽  
Private Firms ◽  
Foreign Competition ◽  
Profit Margins ◽  
The Us ◽  
Alternative Measures ◽  
Concentration Levels

Abstract Since the late 1990s, over 75% of US industries have experienced an increase in concentration levels. We find that firms in industries with the largest increases in product market concentration show higher profit margins and more profitable mergers and acquisitions deals. At the same time, we find no evidence for a significant increase in operational efficiency. Taken together, our results suggest that market power is becoming an important source of value. These findings are robust to the inclusion of (i) private firms; (ii) factors accounting for foreign competition; and (iii) the use of alternative measures of concentration. We also show that the higher profit margins associated with an increase in concentration are reflected in higher returns to shareholders. Overall, our results suggest that the US product markets have undergone a shift that has potentially weakened competition across the majority of industries.

Trading Barriers

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret E. Peters
Keyword(s):  
Immigration Policy ◽  
International Competition ◽  
International Economy ◽  
Trade Barriers ◽  
Foreign Competition ◽  
Capital Movements ◽  
Social Concerns ◽  
Business Support ◽  
The World ◽  
At Home

Why have countries increasingly restricted immigration even when they have opened their markets to foreign competition through trade or allowed their firms to move jobs overseas? This book argues that the increased ability of firms to produce anywhere in the world combined with growing international competition due to lowered trade barriers has led to greater limits on immigration. The book explains that businesses relying on low-skill labor have been the major proponents of greater openness to immigrants. Immigration helps lower costs, making these businesses more competitive at home and abroad. However, increased international competition, due to lower trade barriers and greater economic development in the developing world, has led many businesses in wealthy countries to close or move overseas. Productivity increases have allowed those firms that have chosen to remain behind to do more with fewer workers. Together, these changes in the international economy have sapped the crucial business support necessary for more open immigration policies at home, empowered anti-immigrant groups, and spurred greater controls on migration. Debunking the commonly held belief that domestic social concerns are the deciding factor in determining immigration policy, this book demonstrates the important and influential role played by international trade and capital movements.

Vertical Boilerplate

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Market Power ◽  
Real World ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
Market Mechanism ◽  
Law School ◽  
Information Cost ◽  
Information Costs ◽  
Policy Proposals ◽  
Radical Solution

Despite what we learn in law school about the “meeting of the minds,” most contracts are merely boilerplate—take-it-or-leave-it propositions. Negotiation is nonexistent; we rely on our collective market power as consumers to regulate contracts’ content. But boilerplate imposes certain information costs because it often arrives late in the transaction and is hard to understand. If those costs get too high, then the market mechanism fails. So how high are boilerplate’s information costs? A few studies have attempted to measure them, but they all use a “horizontal” approach—i.e., they sample a single stratum of boilerplate and assume that it represents the whole transaction. Yet real-world transactions often involve multiple layers of contracts, each with its own information costs. What is needed, then, is a “vertical” analysis, a study that examines fewer contracts of any one kind but tracks all the contracts the consumer encounters, soup to nuts. This Article presents the first vertical study of boilerplate. It casts serious doubt on the market mechanism and shows that existing scholarship fails to appreciate the full scale of the information cost problem. It then offers two regulatory solutions. The first works within contract law’s unconscionability doctrine, tweaking what the parties need to prove and who bears the burden of proving it. The second, more radical solution involves forcing both sellers and consumers to confront and minimize boilerplate’s information costs—an approach I call “forced salience.” In the end, the boilerplate experience is as deep as it is wide. Our empirical work should reflect that fact, and our policy proposals should too.

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