You can find my CV here.
The Effects of Labor Market Power: A National Firm Exit Approach
January 2026 [pdf]
This paper investigates how market structure affects wages using restricted‐access Census microdata leveraging firm exits. The theoretical framework is a granular search model in which higher concentration increases monopsony power, thereby putting downward pressure on wages. Empirically, I exploit exit events as an instrument for local labor market structure: when a multi‐establishment firm exits, this exogenous shift alters local market structure but is plausibly orthogonal to contemporaneous labor demand shocks. Using LBD‐identified multi‐establishment exits to instrument for concentration and controlling for time‐varying local demand factors, I isolate the causal impact of concentration on surviving establishments’ wages. I then link these establishment‐level changes to worker outcomes to assess how shifts in employer concentration affect wage trajectories, job mobility, and employment stability. The combined worker‐ and firm‐level analyses clarify the mechanisms through which market structure influences wage setting and provide new evidence on how employer concentration shapes inequality in the labor market.