IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/30586.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Oligopsony Power and Factor-Biased Technology Adoption

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Rubens

Abstract

I show that buyer power of firms could either increase or decrease their technology adoption, depending on the direction of technical change and on which input markets are imperfectly competitive. I examine this relationship empirically in a setting that features both concentrated labor markets and a large technology shock: the introduction of mechanical cutters in the 19th century Illinois coal mining industry. Using a model of production and labor supply which is estimated with mine-level data, I find that oligopsony power over skilled miners reduced the usage of cutting machines, an unskill-biased technology. However, it would have increased the usage of counterfactual skill-biased and Hicks-neutral technologies.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Rubens, 2022. "Oligopsony Power and Factor-Biased Technology Adoption," NBER Working Papers 30586, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30586
    Note: IO LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w30586.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Rubens, 2023. "Management, productivity, and technology choices: evidence from U.S. mining schools," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 54(1), pages 165-186, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J42 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Monopsony; Segmented Labor Markets
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • N52 - Economic History - - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment and Extractive Industries - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30586. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.