Merger guidelines for the labor market

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Research question and motivation. Antitrust review of mergers has historically focused almost entirely on harm to consumers (product-market monopoly), ignoring harm to workers (labor-market monopsony). Following the July 2021 White House executive order and the DOJ’s monopsony-based challenge to the Penguin Random House (PRH)/Simon & Schuster (SS) publishing merger, the agencies are now putting buyer power at the center of policy. The paper asks: how should Herfindahl-based merger-review thresholds, designed for product markets, perform if applied to local labor markets, and what efficiency gains would a merger need to leave workers unharmed?

Thomas Hasenzagl | Macro Paper Warehouse

Merger guidelines for the labor market