Antitrust and Consumer Protection
Competition: Fall 2019, Vol 29, No. 2
Content
- Chair's Column
- Competitive Balance In Sports: "Peculiar Economics" Over the Last Thirty Years
- Compliance With the California Consumer Privacy Act In the Workplace: What Employers Need To Know
- Editor's Note
- Let Me Ride: No Short-cuts In the Antitrust Analysis of Ride Hailing
- Masthead
- Protecting Company Confidential Data In a Free Employee Mobility State: What Companies Doing Business In California Need To Know In Light of Recent Decisions and Evolving Workplace Technology
- Social Media Privacy Legislation and Its Implications For Employers and Employees Alike
- The Complexities of Litigating a No-poach Class Claim In the Franchise Context
- Whistleblowing and Criminal Antitrust Cartels: a Primer and Call For Reform
- Monopsony and Its Impact On Wages and Employment: Past and Future Merger Review
MONOPSONY AND ITS IMPACT ON WAGES AND EMPLOYMENT: PAST AND FUTURE MERGER REVIEW
By Caroline C. Corbitt1
I. INTRODUCTION
Should impact on workers’ wages be part of merger review? The question has been debated by recent scholarship that is grounded in a wider discussion about how—and if—antitrust law can address rising inequality and falling wages in the United States.
Past merger review conducted pursuant to Section 7 of the Clayton Act has focused on evaluating potential monopoly power and anticompetitive harms. But there is a growing call for merger review to consider monopsony2 and its potential harm to workers. Monopsony refers to a situation in which a buyer of products or services has dominant market power. It differs from (and is theoretically the opposite of) a monopoly, in which a seller of products or services has dominant market power.