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Estimating the Wage Elasticity of Labour Supply to a Firm: What Evidence Is There for Monopsony?

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  • Booth, Alison L.

    (Australian National University)

  • Katic, Pamela

    (Australian National University)

Abstract

In this paper we estimate the elasticity of the labour supply to a firm, using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. Estimation of this elasticity is of particular interest not only in its own right but also because of its relevance to the debate about the competitiveness of labour markets. The essence of monopsonistically competitive labour markets is that labour supply to a firm is imperfectly elastic with respect to the wage rate. The intuition is that, where workers have heterogeneous preferences or face mobility costs, firms can offer lower wages without immediately losing their workforce. This is in contrast to the perfectly competitive extreme, in which the elasticity is infinite. Therefore a simple test of whether labour markets are perfectly or imperfectly competitive involves estimating the elasticity of the labour supply to a firm. We find that the Australian wage elasticity of labour supply to a firm is around 0.71, only slightly smaller than the figure of 0.75 reported by Manning (2003) for the UK. These estimates are so far from the perfectly competitive assumption of an infinite elasticity that it would be difficult to make a case that labour markets are perfectly competitive.

Suggested Citation

  • Booth, Alison L. & Katic, Pamela, 2010. "Estimating the Wage Elasticity of Labour Supply to a Firm: What Evidence Is There for Monopsony?," IZA Discussion Papers 5167, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5167
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Alison L. Booth & Marco Francesconi & Carlos Garcia-Serrano, 1999. "Job Tenure and Job Mobility in Britain," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 53(1), pages 43-70, October.
    2. Daron Acemoglu & Jorn-Steffen Pischke, 1999. "The Structure of Wages and Investment in General Training," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(3), pages 539-572, June.
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    4. Alison L. Booth & Pamela Katic, 2011. "Men at Work in a Land Down‐Under: Testing Some Predictions of Human Capital Theory," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 49(1), pages 1-24, March.
    5. Barth, Erling & Dale-Olsen, Harald, 2009. "Monopsonistic discrimination, worker turnover, and the gender wage gap," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 589-597, October.
    6. Bhaskar, V & To, Ted, 1999. "Minimum Wages for Ronald McDonald Monopsonies: A Theory of Monopsonistic Competition," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(455), pages 190-203, April.
    7. Mark Wooden & Nicole Watson, 2007. "The HILDA Survey and its Contribution to Economic and Social Research (So Far)," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 83(261), pages 208-231, June.
    8. Boris Hirsch & Thorsten Schank & Claus Schnabel, 2010. "Differences in Labor Supply to Monopsonistic Firms and the Gender Pay Gap: An Empirical Analysis Using Linked Employer-Employee Data from Germany," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(2), pages 291-330, April.
    9. Ransom, Michael R. & Oaxaca, Ronald L., 2005. "Sex Differences in Pay in a "New Monopsony" Model of the Labor Market," IZA Discussion Papers 1870, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Alison L. Booth & Mark L. Bryan, 2005. "Testing Some Predictions of Human Capital Theory: New Training Evidence from Britain," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(2), pages 391-394, May.
    11. Burdett, Kenneth & Mortensen, Dale T, 1998. "Wage Differentials, Employer Size, and Unemployment," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(2), pages 257-273, May.
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    Cited by:

    1. Jahn, Elke & Hirsch, Boris, 2012. "Is there monopsonistic discrimination against immigrants? First evidence from linked employer employee data," VfS Annual Conference 2012 (Goettingen): New Approaches and Challenges for the Labor Market of the 21st Century 65417, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    2. Manning, Alan, 2011. "Imperfect Competition in the Labor Market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 11, pages 973-1041, Elsevier.
    3. Boris Hirsch & Elke J. Jahn & Alan Manning & Michael Oberfichtner, 2022. "The Urban Wage Premium in Imperfect Labor Markets," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 57(S), pages 111-136.
    4. Ronald Bachmann & Gökay Demir & Hanna Frings, 2022. "Labor Market Polarization, Job Tasks, and Monopsony Power," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 57(S), pages 11-49.
    5. Ben Lodewijks, 2011. "Financial Constraints and Job Mobility in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 87(276), pages 61-75, March.
    6. 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.
    7. Clémence Berson, 2016. "Local labor markets and taste-based discrimination," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-21, December.
    8. Boris Hirsch, 2016. "Gender wage discrimination," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 310-310, November.
    9. Heise, Arne, 2018. "Reconciling Facts with Fiction, or: A Theoretical Speculation of why the Minimum Wage has no Discernible Effect on Employment," MPRA Paper 92483, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Hirsch, Boris & Jahn, Elke J. & Schnabel, Claus, 2013. "The cyclical behaviour of employers' monopsony power and workers' wages," Discussion Papers 89, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Chair of Labour and Regional Economics.
    11. Rafael Sánchez & Javier Finot & Mauricio G. Villena, 2022. "Gender wage gap and firm market power: evidence from Chile," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(18), pages 2109-2121, April.
    12. Dobbelaere, Sabien & Kiyota, Kozo & Mairesse, Jacques, 2015. "Product and labor market imperfections and scale economies: Micro-evidence on France, Japan and the Netherlands," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 290-322.
    13. Anna Sokolova & Todd Sorensen, 2021. "Monopsony in Labor Markets: A Meta-Analysis," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 74(1), pages 27-55, January.
    14. Bachmann, Ronald & Frings, Hanna, 2014. "Monopsony competition and the minimum wage: Evidence from Germany," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100367, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    15. Bredemeier, Christian, 2019. "Gender Gaps in Pay and Inter-Firm Mobility," IZA Discussion Papers 12785, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Witajewski-Baltvilks Jan & Boratyński Jakub, 2021. "Workers or Consumers: Who Pays for Low-Carbon Transition – Theoretical Analysis of Welfare Change in General Equilibrium Setting," Central European Economic Journal, Sciendo, vol. 8(55), pages 231-245, January.
    17. Céline Detilleux & Nick Deschacht, 2021. "The causal effect of the number of children on gender‐specific labour supply elasticities to the firm," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(1), pages 2-24, January.
    18. Agustin Velasquez & Svetlana Vtyurina, 2019. "How Does Taxation Affect Hours Worked in EU New Member States?," IMF Working Papers 2019/130, International Monetary Fund.
    19. Hervé, Justine, 2023. "Specialists or generalists? Cross-industry mobility and wages," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    20. Ihsaan Bassier & Arindrajit Dube & Suresh Naidu, 2020. "Monopsony in Movers: The Elasticity of Labor Supply to Firm Wage Policies," NBER Working Papers 27755, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Brandon Vick, 2017. "Measuring links between labor monopsony and the gender pay gap in Brazil," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-28, December.
    22. : Andrew Minster & Danielle Kavanagh-Smith & Lara-Zuzan Golesorkhi, 2018. "Institutionalist Review and Analysis of Immigration Effects on U.S. Jobs Markets," SCEPA working paper series. 2018-01, Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), The New School.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    labour supply elasticity; monopsony; imperfect competition; separation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J42 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Monopsony; Segmented Labor Markets
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing

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