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Monopsony Power in Higher Education: A Tale of Two Tracks

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  • Austan Goolsbee
  • Chad Syverson

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Austan Goolsbee & Chad Syverson, 2023. "Monopsony Power in Higher Education: A Tale of Two Tracks," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(S1), pages 257-290.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlabec:doi:10.1086/726720
    DOI: 10.1086/726720
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    2. Steven C. Salop & Fiona Scott Morton, 2021. "The 2010 HMGs Ten Years Later: Where Do We Go From Here?," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 58(1), pages 81-101, February.
    3. Shubhdeep Deb & Jan Eeckhout & Aseem Patel & Lawrence Warren, 2022. "What Drives Wage Stagnation: Monopsony or Monopoly?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 20(6), pages 2181-2225.
    4. Dearing, Adam, 2022. "Estimating structural demand and supply models using tax rates as instruments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    5. Mertens, Matthias, 2021. "Labour market power and between-firm wage (in)equality," IWH Discussion Papers 13/2020, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), revised 2021.
    6. Amodio, Francesco & Medina, Pamela & Morlacco, Monica, 2022. "Labor Market Power, Self-Employment, and Development," CEPR Discussion Papers 17543, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Chau, Nancy H. & Kanbur, Ravi & Soundararajan, Vidhya, 2022. "Employer Power and Employment in Developing Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 15514, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Shubhdeep Deb & Jan Eeckhout & Aseem Patel & Lawrence Warren, 2022. "What Drives Stagnation: Monopsony or Monopoly?," Working Papers 22-45, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    9. Barbara Biasi & Song Ma, 2022. "The Education-Innovation Gap," CESifo Working Paper Series 9653, CESifo.
    10. Hashmat Khan & Konstantinos Metaxoglou, 2021. "The Behavior of the Aggregate U.S. Wage Markdown," Carleton Economic Papers 21-06, Carleton University, Department of Economics.
    11. Elizabeth Lyons & Laurina Zhang, 2023. "Salary transparency and gender pay inequality: Evidence from Canadian universities," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(8), pages 2005-2034, August.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • J42 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Monopsony; Segmented Labor Markets

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