Marshall Steinbaum

Marshall Steinbaum is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Utah and a Senior Fellow in Higher Education Finance at Jain Family Institute. He is an empirical labor economist by training, and his research investigates the existence and implications of employer power in labor markets, with applications to antitrust, higher education, and student debt. In addition to his academic research, he has written for a number of popular outlets relating to his expertise in inequality, antitrust, labor markets, the history of economic ideas and intellectual history more generally, student debt and higher education policy, as well as book reviews related to those subjects. Contact CV

Work

• "The Balance of Power in Franchising" Ulrich Atz, Blake Eliason, Peter Norlander, Sérgio Pinto, Marshall Steinbaum. Antitrust Labor 2024
  Abstract

  This paper quantifies changes in the relative autonomy of franchisees with respect to franchisors over the period 2009-2023. We analyze a large corpus of Franchise Disclosure Documents to detect the presence of 27 contractual clauses that shape the balance of power in the franchising relationship. We find the autonomy of franchisees has decreased since 2009: the vast majority operate on an exclusive basis with a given franchise chain, lack exclusive distributorship rights, face restrictions on sourcing inventory, are limited in the products or services they can offer, and have little control over setting retail prices, among other restrictions. These findings relate to longstanding questions about where to draw the boundary of the firm, opening the 'black box' of firm-specific pay-setting, and the competitive effect of vertical restraints, horizontal consolidation, and corporate structure.

• "The Effect of Franchise No-poaching Restrictions on Worker Earnings" Brian Callaci, Matthew Gibson, Sérgio Pinto, Marshall Steinbaum, Matt Walsh. Review of Economics and Statistics. Labor 2024
  Abstract

  We evaluate the nationwide impact of the Washington State Attorney General’s 2018-20 enforcement campaign against no-poach clauses in franchising contracts, which prohibited worker movement across locations within a chain. Implementing a staggered difference-in-differences research design using Burning Glass Technologies job vacancies and Glassdoor salary reports from numerous industries, we estimate a 6% increase in posted annual earnings from the job vacancy data and a 4% increase in worker-reported earnings. (JEL: J42, K21, L40, J31)

• "A Retrospective Analysis of the Acquisition of Target’s Pharmacy Business by CVS Health: Labor Market Perspective" Enas Farag, Alaa Abdelfattah, Chris Compton, Anna Stansbury, Marshall Steinbaum. Labor 2024
  Abstract

  We analyze the labor market impact of CVS Health’s acquisition of Target’s pharmacy business in December 2015, using Lightcast job posting data. Employing difference-in- differences and event study specifications with treatment assigned by geography, we find that the acquisition reduced pay in affected labor markets by 4% in our preferred specification. We test for heterogeneous merger effects by treatment intensity and by occupational characteristics. Commuting zones where both CVS and Target had significant presence pre-merger experience worse pay outcomes following the merger. Further, occupations with lower pay, lower outward mobility, and whose outside job options were impacted the most by the merger exhibit more pronounced negative effects on pay.

• "Vertical Restraints and Labor Markets in Franchised Industries" Brian Callaci, Sergio Pinto, Marshall Steinbaum, Matt Walsh. Research in Labor Economics. Labor 2023
  Abstract

  This paper combines 530 digitized Franchise Disclosure Documents and standard contracts with employer-identified job ads from Burning Glass Technologies to establish stylized facts about franchising labor markets and their relation to the vertical restraints and contractual provisions that limit the autonomy of franchisees vis a vis their franchisors. We report novel findings about the application of vertical restraints like Resale Price Maintenance, Exclusive Dealing, and No-poaching Restrictions, among many others, to a low wage workforce. A legal regime that favors the franchising business model incentivizes franchisees to profit at the expense of workers and to limit egalitarian tendencies operating in the workplace.
  

• "Evaluating the Competitive Effect of the Proposed Kroger-Albertsons Merger in Labor Markets" Marshall Steinbaum. Antitrust 2023
  Abstract

  Leading national retail grocery chains Kroger and Albertsons announced plans to merge in the fall of 2022, a transaction that is currently under review by antitrust enforcers. This paper assesses whether the merger would harm competition in labor markets through three channels: increased employer concentration giving rise to reduced wages and working hours, reduced labor market dynamism as workers would be deprived of the ability to switch jobs to obtain improved working conditions, and the reduction in union leverage at the bargaining table. We conclude that all three channels constitute valid competitive threats, and hence the merger is likely to violate the Clayton Act by reducing labor market competition.

• "The Long-Run Impact of the Great Recession on Student Debt" Sérgio Pinto, Marshall Steinbaum. Labour Economics. Higher Education 2023
  Abstract

  This paper investigates the effect of local labor market shocks during the Great Recession on subsequent student debt-related outcomes for a panel of 1 million student loan borrowers between the ages 17 and 34 in 2009, following that cohort’s credit reports for the subsequent 10 years. We find that the Great Recession significantly increased student indebtedness, delinquency and default on student debt, and overall non-repayment of student loans. The Great Recession’s effect on student indebtedness amplifies throughout the length of the panel, through 2019. We find that re-enrollment in higher education in response to the recession and declining state and local funding for public institutions are two likely mechanisms by which the recession exerted such a long-term impact on the financial status of student borrowers, beyond the initial economic shock and the sluggish labor market recovery.

• "Coercive Rideshare Practices: At the Intersection of Antitrust and Consumer Protection Law in the Gig Economy" Christopher L. Peterson, Marshall Steinbaum. University of Chicago Law Review. Antitrust 2023
  Abstract

  This Essay considers antitrust and consumer protection liability for coercive practices vis-à-vis drivers that are prevalent in the rideshare industry. Resale price maintenance, nonlinear pay practices, withholding data, and conditioning data access on maintaining a minimum acceptance rate all curtail platform competition, sustaining a high-price, tacitly collusive equilibrium among the few incumbents. Moreover, concealing relevant trip data from drivers is both deceptive and unfair when the platforms are in full possession of the relevant facts. In the absence of these coercive practices, customers too would be better-off due to platform competition that would lower average prices by sharpening competition between incumbents, enable entry by rivals charging lower take rates, and unravel pervasive price discrimination. Coercive practices in the rideshare industry and elsewhere, and the business models they enable, result from the preference for hierarchy and domination inherent in the contraction of liability for vertical restraints since the 1970s.

• "FTC Definition of Employment" Sanjukta Paul, Marshall Steinbaum. Antitrust 2023
  Abstract

  We encourage the Federal Trade Commission to adopt the ABC test for employment status as part of its proposed noncompete rule, primarily for two purposes:

  1. Ensure the scope of the noncompete rule is as broad as possible.
  2. Enlarge the set of actors whose horizontal coordination is protected by antitrust's labor exemption.
• "Establishing Market and Monopoly Power in Tech Platform Antitrust Cases" Marshall Steinbaum. University of Utah. Antitrust 2022
  Abstract

  In June 2021 a federal judge dismissed the Federal Trade Commission's first monopolization complaint against Facebook on the grounds that it did not plead sufficient facts to establish that Facebook possesses monopoly power in online social networking. The ruling highlights two contentious aspects of antitrust jurisprudence: the legal necessity of establishing a defendant's monopoly power as part of Sherman Act liability for unilateral conduct, and of establishing market power as part of liability for some forms of multi-lateral conduct, as well as the few mechanisms available to plaintiffs in both public and private enforcement to accomplish that, especially following Ohio v. American Express. This article makes two, related claims: that direct evidence of market power is plentiful and should be understood as such by courts, and that exactly the direct evidence of market power that courts should consider also establishes that relevant markets on each side of tech platforms are small when properly defined, whatever defendants may say.

• "Labor Market Concentration" Marshall Steinbaum, José Azar, Ioana Marinescu. Journal of Human Resources. Labor 2022
  Abstract

  A product market is concentrated when a few firms dominate the market. Similarly, a labor market is concentrated when a few firms dominate hiring in the market. Using data from the leading employment website CareerBuilder.com, we calculate labor market concentration for over 8,000 geographic-occupational labor markets in the US. Based on the DOJ-FTC horizontal merger guidelines, the average market is highly concentrated. Going from the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile in concentration is associated with a 5% (OLS) to 17% (IV) decline in posted wages, suggesting that concentration increases labor market power.

• "Common Ownership and the Corporate Governance Channel for Employer Power in Labor Markets" Marshall Steinbaum. Antitrust Bulletin. Antitrust 2021
  Abstract

  This article combines two relatively new subjects of antitrust scholarly interest: labor market power, and corporate governance. In so doing, it speaks to a number of recent debates that have grown up both inside the scholarly antitrust literature and adjacent to it. First, the paper interprets the shift in the balance of power within corporations favoring shareholders at the expense of workers, both in economic-theoretical and historical terms. Second, it lays out the role of shareholders and the common ownership channel as a vector for anti-competitive conduct arising between firms, not just within firms, thanks to profit-maximization at the portfolio level rather than the firm level.  Third, it evaluates the claim that employer market power has increased, relative to other current explanations for labor market trends. Fourth, it ties rising employer power in labor markets to the increasing significance of common ownership. And finally, it contends that antitrust is a suitable policy remedy to the dual problems of anti-competitive common ownership and increased employer power, provided it abandons the consumer welfare standard and instead elevates worker welfare to an equivalent juridical status.

• "The Student Debt Crisis is a Crisis of Non-Repayment" Marshall Steinbaum. Jain Family Institute. Higher Education 2020
  Abstract

  This brief analyzes the increased prevalence of the non-repayment of student debt, primarily due to the increased takeup of the various Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) programs since the middle of the 2000s. It shows deteriorating repayment over time and across borrower cohorts, as well as suggestive evidence of a significant and growing repayment gap between minority and white borrowers. The implication of rising non-repayment is that the cancellation of a large (and increasing) share of outstanding student debt is inevitable.

• "Concentration in US Labor Markets: Evidence From Online Vacancy Data" Marshall Steinbaum, José Azar, Ioana Marinescu, Bledi Taska. Labour Economics. Labor 2020
  Abstract

  Using data on the near-universe of US online job vacancies collected by Burning Glass Technologies in 2016, we calculate labor market concentration using the Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI) for each commuting zone by 6-digit SOC occupation. The average market has an HHI of 4,378, or the equivalent of 2.3 recruiting employers. 60% of labor markets are highly concentrated (above 2,500 HHI). Highly concentrated markets account for 16% of employment. Labor market concentration is negatively correlated with wages, and there is no relationship between measured concentration and an occupation’s skill level. These indicators suggest that employer concentration is a meaningful measure of emoployer power in labor markets, that there is a high degree of employer power in labor markets, but also that it varies widely across occupations and geography.

• "What is the Problem with Student Debt? (Point)" Marshall Steinbaum, Sara Goldrick-Rab. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Higher Education 2020
  Abstract
• "Effective Treatment for the Student Debt Crisis Requires an Accurate Diagnosis (Counterpoint)" Marshall Steinbaum, Sara Goldrick-Rab. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Higher Education 2020
  Abstract
• "The Effective Competition Standard: A New Standard for Antitrust" Marshall Steinbaum, Maurice E. Stucke. University of Chicago Law Review. Antitrust 2020
  Abstract

  America’s failing antitrust system is, in large part, to blame for today’s market power problem. Lax antitrust law and enforcement have allowed troubling trends like corporate consolidation to remain unchallenged, further embedding our skewed economy. In highly concentrated markets, individuals have limited choice and little power to pick their price, quality, or provider for the goods and services they need; workers are met with powerful employers and have little agency to shop around or bargain for competitive wages and benefits; and suppliers can’t reach the market without paying powerful intermediaries or succumbing to acquisition.

  Our Essay offers an alternative to the courts’ consumer welfare standard. Ambiguous and inadequate, the consumer welfare standard identifies threats to competition only by the potential consequences for consumers and ignores adverse effects on workers, suppliers, product quality, and innovation.

  Our effective competition standard would restore the primary aim of antitrust laws — namely, to promote competition wherever in the economy it has been compromised, including throughout supply chains and in the labor market. These changes are essential to protect competitive markets in the United States, as well as individuals and the economy at large, by deconcentrating private power.

• "Antitrust, The Gig Economy, and Labor Market Power" Marshall Steinbaum. Law & Contemporary Problems. Antitrust 2019
  Abstract

  The causes of diminishing worker bargaining power in the US labor market include the evolution of antitrust policy and its enforcement toward de facto legalization for vertical restraints imposed by dominant firms on subordinates, as well as robust targeting of horizontal coordination arrangements for antitrust enforcement, such as collective bargaining by workers who fall just outside antitrust's labor exemption and the trimming of the state action antitrust exemption to disfavor state-sanctioned price-setting and entry-regulation regimes. The effect is to permit dominant firms to dictate to and control the labor of less powerful counterparties, while preventing those counterparties from organizing against dominant firms themselves. This trend can be seen most powerfully in the growth of the gig economy labor platforms, particularly in ridesharing. Claims that eroding worker bargaining power have little to do with antitrust or with employer monopsony power are thus categorically false.

• "Monopsony and the Business Model of Gig Economy Platforms" Marshall Steinbaum. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Antitrust 2019
  Abstract
• "Measuring Labor Market Power Two Ways" Marshall Steinbaum, José Azar, Ioana Marinescu. AEA Papers and Proceedings. Labor 2019
  Abstract

  A growing literature on employer power in labor markets provides evidence for widespread monopsony. Much of this literature uses the elasticity of labor supply to the individual firm as a key proxy for monopsony; an elasticity that is well below infinity is a sign that employers have wage-setting power and can pay workers less than their marginal productivity. More recently, a flurry of studies has shown a negative relationship between wages and labor market concentration of employers. The labor supply elasticity and labor market concentration are both measures of labor market power, but how are they empirically related?

  In this paper, we estimate a proxy for the elasticity of labor supply and investigate the relationship between this proxy and labor market concentration. We use data from the popular job posting website CareerBuilder.com to estimate firm-level wage-setting power based on the elasticity of job applications in response to variation in the posted wage. In order to deal with the endogeneity of wages, we instrument for local variation in posted wages with posted wages from the same firm in other occupations and other commuting zones. The elasticity we estimate is 0.42, a fairly low value.M

• "Antitrust and Labor Market Power" Marshall Steinbaum, José Azar, Ioana Marinescu. Economics for Inclusive Prosperity. Antitrust 2019
  Abstract

  Starting with the Chicago School’s influence in the late 1970s and 1980s, antitrust enforcement has been weakened under the assumption that market power is justified by economic efficiency. While consumers are the main focus of antitrust enforcement, the weakening of antitrust enforcement has likely also adversely impacted workers, thus contributing to increasing inequality.

  In this brief, we outline elements of an antitrust reform agenda aimed at reversing the weakening of antitrust enforcement, insofar as it pertains to and has strengthened the power employers have to set wages and working conditions for their workers, without countervailing power on the part of workers, who have limited ability to leave for another job in order to increase their pay.

• "The Student Debt Crisis, Labor Market Credentialization, and Racial Inequality" Marshall Steinbaum, Julie Margetta Morgan. Roosevelt Institute. Higher Education 2018
  Abstract

  As tuition has risen over the last several decades in the U.S., student loan debt has ballooned. Despite growing debt loads, federal policy encourages the use of loans for financing higher education, based on the assumption that student debt supports increased post-secondary attainment--and, in turn, improved outcomes for individuals and our economy as a whole. We investigate the individual and societal effects of student loan debt by focusing on trends in student debt and labor market outcomes. Our findings include:

  • More education has not led to higher earnings over time.
  • Student debt is a burden for a growing share of young adults.
  • Credentialization better explains these dynamics than the “skills gap.”
  • These trends have had particularly negative impacts on Black and brown Americans.

  Ultimately, we challenge the dominant literature and conventional wisdom that drive the pursuit of higher education, concluding that student debt exacerbates income inequality and threatens the broader economy’s stability. It is crucial to understand these dynamics of student debt, labor markets, and race, as well as how they interact and intersect, in order to inform better public policy that lifts students up, rather than maintain a system that holds them back.

• "The Macroeconomic Consequences of Student Debt Cancellation" Stephanie Kelton, Scott Fulwiler, Catherine Ruetschlin. Levy Institute. Higher Education 2018
  Abstract

  More than 44 million Americans are caught in a student debt trap. Collectively, they owe nearly $1.4 trillion on outstanding student loan debt. Research shows that this level of debt hurts the US economy in a variety of ways, holding back everything from small business formation to new home buying, and even marriage and reproduction. It is a problem that policymakers have attempted to mitigate with programs that offer refinanc-ing or partial debt cancellation. But what if something far more ambitious were tried? What if the population were freed from making any future payments on the current stock of outstand-ing student loan debt? Could it be done, and if so, how? What would it mean for the US economy? This report seeks to answer those very questions. The analysis proceeds in three sections: the first explores the current US context of increasing college costs and reliance on debt to finance higher education; the second section works through the balance sheet mechanics required to liberate Americans from student loan debt; and the final section simulates the economic effects of this debt cancellation using two models, Ray Fair’s US Macroeconomic Model (“the Fair model”) and Moody’s US Macroeconomic Model.

• "A History of Economics Hubris" Marshall Steinbaum, Bernard A. Weisberger. History of Economic Ideas. History of Economics 2018
  Abstract

  Thomas Leonard's 2016 book Illiberal Reformers weaponizes the retrograde views of progressive labor economists into a revisionist attack on their scholarship and contemporary influence. If it is aimed at criticizing those scholars' "scientism," and that of economists more broadly, its effort could be far better directed at the neoclassical economists who gained decisive influence over the profession in the middle of the 20th century. In fact, by aiming at progressive economists of an earlier era, its likely motivation is as a deflection and "whataboutist" defense of the neoclassical influence--as is evidenced by the book's popularity with expressly ideologically right-wing economics curricula.

• "The Intellectual Legacy of Progressive Economics" Marshall Steinbaum, Bernard A. Weisberger. Journal of Economic Literature. History of Economics 2017
  Abstract

  Thomas Leonard’s 2016 book Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era argues that exclusionary views on eugenics, race, immigration, and gender taint the intellectual legacy of progressive economics and economists. This review essay reconsiders that legacy and places it in the context within which it developed. While the early generations of scholars who founded the economics profession in the United States and trained in its departments did indeed hold and express retrograde views on those subjects, those views were common to a broad swath of the intellectual elite of that era, including the progressives’ staunchest opponents inside and outside academia. Moreover, Leonard anachronistically intermingles a contemporary critique of early-twentieth-century progressive economics and the progressive movement writ large, serving to decontextualize those disputes—a flaw that is amplified by the book’s unsystematic approach to reconstructing the views and writing it attacks. Notwithstanding the history Leonard presents, economists working now nonetheless owe their progressive forebears for contributions that have become newly relevant: the “credibility revolution,” the influence of economic research on policy and program design, the prestige of economists working in and providing advice to government agencies and policy makers, and the academic freedom economists en joy in modern research-oriented universities are all a part of that legacy.

• "Declining Entrepreneurship, Labor Mobility, and Business Dynamism: A Demand-Side Approach" Marshall Steinbaum, Mike Konczal. Roosevelt Institute. Labor 2016
  Abstract

  Attention in the academic and policy-making worlds has recently focused on the decline in “business dynamism”—specifically, the rate at which new businesses are formed and the rate at which they grow—especially since 2000. In this paper we reinterpret the evidence of declining entrepreneurship and rising concentration of employment in old firms and large firms—in conjunction with declining labor market mobility—as evidence of a trend decline in labor demand. This is opposed to the hypothesis that the cause of these empirical trends is increasing supply-side restrictions placed on new firm or worker entrants, a hypothesis the data rejects. The overall erosion in the job ladder and the economy's decreasing competitiveness, rising profits, and inter-firm inequality are all evidence of a power shift in favor of the owners and managers of incumbent firms. That suggests future research should investigate potential policy-related causes of those trends in demand and market structure—such as lower marginal tax rates on high earners and a permissive environment for inter-firm mergers—that de-emphasize full employment and market competition.

• None found.