Employer Consolidation and Wages: Evidence from Hospitals
通过研究医院合并，检验雇主集中度提高是否导致工资增长放缓。发现仅在合并大幅提高集中度且工人技能具有行业特异性时，工资增长才显著减缓，工会力量可削弱这一效应。
We test whether wage growth slows following employer consolidation by examining hospital mergers. We find evidence of reduced wage growth in cases where both (i) the increase in concentration induced by the merger is large and (ii) workers’ skills are industry-specific. In all other cases, we fail to reject zero wage effects. We consider alternative explanations and find that the observed patterns are unlikely to be explained by merger-related changes besides labor market power. Wage growth slowdowns are attenuated in markets with strong labor unions, and wage growth does not decline after out-of-market mergers that leave local employer concentration unchanged.