Beschreibung:
This paper presents evidence that firms had labor market power during the early 1930s. Using plant-level data from the Census of Manufactures between 1929 and 1935, I construct a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index of local labor market concentration at the State-Economic-Area-by-industry level. I find that local labor market concentration has a strong negative relationship with wages which is consistent with labor market monopsony power. The results are robust to excluding local labor markets with one firm, excluding industries with local product markets, and redefining labor market concentration at the county-by-industry level