Labor Market Concentration and Wages: Incumbents versus New Hires

Arbeitspapier

We investigate the impact of labor market concentration on average wages and decompose it into its effects on new hires and incumbents, where incumbents are defined as individuals who were already employed in the same firm the year before. Using administrative data for France, we find that concentration negatively affects both new hires' and incumbents' wages with elasticities ranging from -0.0287 to -0.0296 and -0.0185 to -0.0230, respectively. It also reduces the probability that a worker be a new hire rather than an incumbent. When decomposing the overall effect of labor market concentration on wages into its different components, we find that the negative effect on incumbents' wages accounts for between two thirds and three fourth of the total.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 15910

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials ; Monopsony; Segmented Labor Markets ; Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices
• Subject: labor market concentration ; monopsony ; wages ; incumbents

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Bassanini, Andrea ; Batut, Cyprien ; Caroli, Eve
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/272537
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:46 AM CET