 Hello and welcome to today's discussion on antitrust law and how it can be a tool for helping workers. My name is Mary Alice McCarthy and I direct the Center on Education and Labor at New America. Over the last decade there has been a resurgence of interest in antitrust law and in the role that market concentration that is the domination of a particular product of service market by just a few firms. The role that that market concentration is playing in the growth of economic inequality over the last several decades. This phenomenon of growing market concentration and declining competitiveness is occurring across many different industries and markets, most notably in technology but also in industries like healthcare, retail and hospitality, transportation and warehousing and more. Most of the scholarship and writing on antitrust has focused on the negative impacts of these oligopolistic markets on consumers, particularly on prices and on the quality of specific products and services. Not as much has been written about the impact of market concentration on workers and labor markets. That is until recently. And today I have the tremendous privilege to welcome two of the foremost thinkers and writers on antitrust policy broadly speaking, and on its potential for helping workers, specifically. So please welcome Eric A. Posner, Kirkland and Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law from the University of Chicago, and Tim Wu, Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy at the White House National Economic Council, and formerly a professor at Columbia University and a former New America fellow. Welcome to you both and thank you very much for joining us today. My pleasure to be here. Thanks for having us. Great. So Eric, go ahead and get started with you. You've done a lot of writing on antitrust and workers specifically probably more than anyone and just last year you published a book titled how antitrust failed workers. So I think an obvious place to start would be with just that. How has antitrust policy failed workers. And can you please give us some concrete examples of that failure. Sure. And as you mentioned, Mary Alice, most of the focus of antitrust law has been on product markets. And so when people think of antitrust law they think of the law that's used to counter technology companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and other companies from raising prices through concentration and various types of inclusive behavior. Now antitrust law though applies to all markets, not just the product markets that applies to labor markets as well. And yet there's been relatively little discussion about the application of antitrust law to labor markets. And until recently there was hardly any at all. And this is quite surprising when you think about it because just as firms can engage in for example price fixing agreements in order to raise prices and product markets they can also engage in wage fixing agreements in order to reduce wages in labor markets. And that has exactly the same type of harm people as consumers have to pay higher prices, people as workers have to pay receive lower wages. So there's been a number of examples. There've been a number of examples of well documented, well documented inclusive behavior and labor markets over the last few years. Now most of these examples do involve legal action of some sort, because they were so blatant and outrageous. But the problem is, is that there's so little of it and there's a lot of this behavior going on which has been, you know, it's suggested very strongly by academic literature. There's a lot of examples to to get people's intuitions going. So a few years ago, a pair of economists at Princeton published a paper, which looked at franchise agreements. So the big franchise companies like McDonald's, Wendy's Burger King's they enter into what are called franchise agreements with their franchisees these are the restaurants that people actually enter and these restaurants are not owned by these companies they actually have a franchise contract with them. And these economists discovered that in most of these franchise agreements, and these are agreements among involving among the most famous companies in the country like McDonald's, there were what was called a no coach agreement. And no coach agreement says that a particular franchise restaurant, for example is not allowed to hire a way of worker from another franchise restaurant. So for example, and there's a case involving a woman who worked for a McDonald's restaurant in Chicago. She was solicited by another restaurant she was being paid, you know, 10 or 11 or $12 an hour by the first restaurant. And the owner of the other restaurant said why don't you come and work for me I'll pay you more. I value your skills more. And they learned that the, the, the owner of the second franchise learned that the no poaching agreement prohibited that type of behavior so he said never mind. And she was unable to obtain this job so that's a collusive agreement between competitors, these restaurants compete for for workers. And these agreements cover millions of people. And so these no poach agreements that these economists discovered applied to millions of people. There has been litigation against them. And most of the I understand that most of these franchises have dropped the no poach clauses from these franchise agreements. But the follow on litigation on behalf of the workers like the woman I was referring to at the McDonald's that is encountered headwinds in the courts because courts are unfamiliar with this type of antitrust violation and seem to be a little bit confused about how best to address them. A related example. This is also a kind of a famous scandal from a few years back, Jimmy johns the sandwich chain had inserted non compete causes into the employment agreements with its workers these are the people who made sandwiches at Jimmy johns. And a non compete agreement is a bit like a no poach agreement. It's a bit different. The employee who's banned by non compete agreement is not allowed to work for any company that competes with Jimmy johns within a few miles of a Jimmy johns. And because there are thousands of Jimmy johns around the country that these non compete causes effectively prevented a worker who was fired from a Jimmy johns from you know working for a competitor like subway. And, and, and, and, apparently, when some workers did try their bosses would tell them you can't do that because of this time compete. Now compete is the name suggests is an anti competitive agreement. They're traditionally regulated under the common law, which puts some restrictions on them, but the type of non compete that Jimmy johns use which is applied to all employees, regardless of how skillful they are with truly anti competitive, not only hurting their workers directly, but hurting their competitors other employers wouldn't be able to hire workers that they need it. And that could result not only in lower wages for the workers but higher prices for the people who go to these restaurants. And I'll give you one more example irrelevant to the pandemic. So markets labor markets involving registered nurses have been studied quite a bit. And recently to hospitals in Texas merged. And they had to obtain the approval of the Texas agency which ultimately gave approval, but the Federal Trade Commission submitted a comment in which they oppose this merger and they pointed out that the two hospital systems that plan to merge. They employed 50% and 45% respectively of the of all the registered nurses in the area. So when they joined together they would as a merchant entity they would employ 95% of the of the registered nurses in the area. Now if they employ you know 95% of registered nurses, these nurses really have no other options they work for this company no matter how little it pays them, and how bad the conditions are or they quit, you know, some people can move away. To another market but most people because of family commitments and other connections, you know can't don't have that option. This merger I found particularly striking in light of some academic research that was published recently, which looked at mergers of hospitals around the country. So a large number of hospitals, and found that when hospitals and concentrated labor markets merged. The wage growth for medical professionals declined compared to hospitals that did not merge for hospitals that merged in more competitive markets. So at least for this Texas merger you know it only happened recently but one would expect that the registered nurses are going to be harmed. Over time. So these are all cases that you know should at least be subject to antitrust litigation. There are been attempts by some private lawyers to bring cases but they're very difficult. And, and I think it's very likely that there are you know many more examples of this type of inclusive behavior around the country. And the reason for thinking that is that you have another set of papers of academic papers have shown that is an extremely high level of labor market concentration around the country meaning that. In most areas in the country for particular types of jobs they're only a handful of employers one or two, or three maybe and when one or two or three employers exist in a market it's very easy for them to collude to hold down wages. And even if they don't explicitly collude, they can, you know basically ensure that wages are not as high as they should be. So this is probably a very big problem, and, and, and I think that you know, there should be more. And antitrust law it's the type of problem that entry antitrust law is appropriate for. So thank you for that those were, those are such interesting examples and I just want to note that two out of three of your examples to were of totally low wage workers right workers and fast food restaurants you know the hospital workers the registered nurses not so much but they think to when people think of things like anti poaching and non competes they're probably thinking of very highly skilled workers with you know, you know and super competitive markets. And this is a very low wage workers who have very, who are very vulnerable already and quite precarious so that's that's very striking. And that brings me to the next question which is, you know, in your writing you do explain how this market concentration to storage labor markets and makes them less competitive. But you also write about why those impacts on those particularly those vulnerable workers have not gotten as much attention from lawyers from unions, and from policymakers and can you share with us a little bit about why this is a problem that has been sort of not not taken up by lawyers policymakers and unions. Sure, I think there are two basic reasons I interrupt that and say, has historically not been taken up. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Times are changing. But there are two basic reasons. The first is political and the second is intellectual. So, back when anti trust law was first created in the late 19th, early 20th century. It was initially used against unions, rather than against sellers this is kind of well known and there's this long history of union suspicion toward anti trust law because, because of that. And probably, what's more important is that when workers were trying to, you know, aggregate their bargaining power to oppose employers that underpaid them union organization was the natural way to do that. And so not only did workers organize unions but they also tried to persuade Congress and state legislatures to support unions in various ways and that's where all the energy was union density in this country increased fairly steadily until the 1950s. And I think until that time it probably never occurred to people that they needed anti trust law, the workers that they needed anti trust law was the union that would negotiate with the employer in order to ensure that wages were not suppressed below the competitive level. But union density, as everyone knows has declined quite rapidly, especially in the private sector. Since the 1950s and Union, most people, you know, very few people compared to the entire working population are unionized and so there's this gap, I think left over by the decline of unions. And, and I think that this is a gap that anti trust law could at least partly fill. The second is intellectual and it's related to this point, but strikingly, you know, I think there's a story here where economists were drawn to anti trust law, because there's a lot of anti trust litigation but it was on the product markets. And so there's a field in economics called industrial organization or IO which studies product markets and so the economists in that field were hired and paid to serve as expert witnesses. And this stimulated more work in the field with the result that the field advanced, you know, very far anti trust litigation became increasingly complex. Now the IO people were not focused on labor because they don't do labor. There's another field of economics level labor economics and the labor economists were focused on unions because of their historical importance and other elements of the employment relationship and they weren't so concerned about market structure. The, the, you know, over time the government hired these IO economists to help bring cases they didn't hire the labor economists, the labor economists weren't really focused on anti trust issues because they weren't being hired and it wasn't that litigation. And so this kind of bifurcation has acted as a real drag on anti trust litigation and labor markets. And this is all changing just over the last few years, labor labor economists have discovered anti trust they've discovered this problem of labor market concentration so I think this too will change in the near future. Thank you for that and let's use that as our segue to you Tim. And thank you so much for joining us and to your point yes this is a we're in a very different place in the policy conversation today, you've been writing about anti trust for a long time. Yeah, let's get this a little bit. First of all, what you think about this trend, you know this move towards more focus on labor markets. Give us a little bit of perspective of what you have how that field is thinking has developed as one of the first sort of people thinking about anti trust and anything about Eric's work or writing that has surprised you or that you want to react to. Yeah, sure thanks and it's pleasure to be here. As I mentioned I was a new America fellow and I really appreciated those years and they helped me write my own first book which is always a challenge for for anyone. I wanted to say a few things so yeah there has been I think intellectual and somewhat political and policy movement surrounding anti trust revitalization. Someone said the anti trust winter is over a few years ago, and I think that's true. I like any kind of movement or thing they're different segments to it, and I think that that in some ways we look back at this five years later from now that that labor anti trust may really turn out to be one of the areas with with some of the most legs and depth and potential. I think that once you start to, in some ways, look at the other side of the market or look at labor markets you can undo it. And it makes sure it's like putting on a different pair of glasses or maybe the scales from your eyes or something. And it really changes the way you think about a lot of problems. Yeah, I mean, reader of most things that Eric has rights or has written over the years. This one I really think he said the jackpot. I think he's come out with the right book at the right time. I think it's having enormous influence in the administration and and how people are thinking about all these problems. You know, and Eric and I have been around long enough to know that doesn't happen with every single thing you write. I think in this case it's sort of. And I think that's and I think that this this work that Eric is doing obviously other people as well but the work he's doing is just puts it so clearly and really lays a roadmap for I think what will be some significant changes in this area. In fact, we've already started I probably shouldn't comment on individual matters but I think if you analyze some of the work that justice and FTC is doing you can already start to see the influence of this kind of thinking on their work. So in terms of what's surprising, you know when I read the book, and I think Eric always, I can't remember what page it on but he, he talks about how as recently as the early thousands that industrial economists were happy to just assume perfect competition and labor markets as an input. And I think it's worth dwelling on that for a second. You know economics is somewhat famous for its unrealistic assumptions. That's part of what also it makes it useful. But when you think about it that this one is, and this is kind of the power is just discovering just how unrealistic that that assumption is. And the assumption is that if a job with higher wages sort of emerged anywhere. Nothing stops the work from taking it. And so the employer is compelled by the market to pay a competitive wage that's kind of where it leads. But you know if you think about it, you know for most of us, moving Caesar towns is not exactly costless or leaving behind a nice job you've had for some period. But in fact, for most things, it seems exactly backwards. You know, I think most of us probably find it easier to frequent a different restaurant or maybe even change the brand of cola you drank or, or whatever the case by me on other words change products substitute a product maybe eat corn instead of chips if the prices of chips go too high. We find probably find that easier than than changing jobs so in some ways it's almost exactly backwards. And in fact that was, you know, Eric referred to the, to labor law, or at least to the labor movement. And you know that was sort of the assumption I think of the labor movement that at least originally the workers were too powerless. They didn't change jobs easily and that's why they had to unite and bargain collectively. So, anyway, I just want to say that that really really sort of surprised me that I, well, all of us, you know have blind spots and can go years without really thinking about something but it's amazing to me as an entire endeavor that everyone was like yeah that's fine, you know and didn't really think about looking very often at the labor side of these markets. I appreciate that that very much and I will say I know similarly the thing that I think was most striking to me as I read how anti trust field workers with this sort of realization the obvious realization that everything that we so much of what we do in the workforce development and education space is based on the premise that labor markets are competitive. And that is taken as a given and many of the strategies particularly in workforce development make that assumption and, and what it means to, to not do that so I'd like to come back to that but I want to come back. Tim to, you know, you're at the White House figured, you know, like all of us virtually these days but are right now. Can you share with us a little bit more about how the Biden administration is thinking about anti trust policy in relation to workers, I realize, you know, with with an element of what you can share. And, and in particular, it's, how do you think about this policy area. What does it mean for the Department of Labor what does it you know where do these things sit we're used to having policies and regulations and practices that affect workers come through the Department of Labor, just wondering if you have anything you can share about the administration's thinking in this space and how it's evolving. Yeah, I think that's a question we're very happy to talk about. I'll start by saying, you know, I think there's a democratic imperative in this area, you know anti trust is often, or has been thought of as being something of a, of a technocratic it is sort of necessarily somewhat technical but I, you know, there is a there is a demand I think by this administration that something be done differently than has been done for the last, let's say 20 or 30 years 40 years with respect to who is who are the winners and losers in the economy. You know there is there's an acute popular demand, not really left wing or right wing that that people get a better sort of better shake. You know, and that's, and I think that has a lot to do with the relative power of employers and workers and, you know, some of the statistics on the people have seen about. This is starting to change but you know for a long time there was a real lack of change in real wages. So, I think I want to suggest that the these concerns aren't sort of in the air but have been taken seriously in visceral ways by by this White House. So, the, if you look at the executive order on competition, which came out on July 9, you know, I don't want to read all of it but it said this, you know, could could have been written by by Eric maybe here I'll do a quote the This is from the executive order signed by the President, the American promise abroad of the American promise abroad and sustained prosperity depends on an open competitive economy for workers a competitive marketplace creates more high quality jobs and the economic freedom to switch jobs or negotiate a higher wage. So you know it's full of things like like that. And I think signals. And, you know, executive orders and, and the President and the White House we don't obviously dictate individual cases but we do dictate enforcement policy. And I think we've made it clear to the enforcement agencies. The Department and the Federal Trade Commission that we, you know, want them to be thinking seriously about these, these ideas. And you know that comes all the way from the top the President is very focused, I think he got sort of his entrance to to becoming an antitrust person. The President didn't come from price theory, but came from really probably from non competes and the sense that you know workers kind of getting a raw deal not being able to switch jobs. Something he's signaled in the back when he was Vice President, but has always had a very great sensitivity to. So, you know he's personally very invested in the stuff. And I will say you know you asked so how does this manifest itself. Well so partially it's through the setting of competition policy by the White House, partially it's through who has been appointed. Partially it's in a call for for whole government cooperation and things like having the Justice Department and the Labor Department work together among other agencies. So that's I think the shift I think that you know there there are traditional labor agencies and then there are antitrust agencies, and I think one of the big shifts is we will think of more labor policy, frankly coming from the antitrust sides. Thank you for that. I do have a couple more questions but before I go on I want to first let our audience know we are taking questions we will we will take questions so encourage you to put your questions in the slido box. And as we're going to continue to talk and then we'll move to a Q&A period. Also they want to give you Eric a chance to respond to anything that Tim said or any thoughts that you wanted to share before we go on to another question. Well, I mean I do think that that executive order from last July was an amazing document. The president is the first president who has made it a priority to address labor market problems from an antitrust or competition perspective. So, there's a lot more in that in that executive order but I was very excited to see that and I think it's very important. And this idea of getting other parts of the government involved is also an extremely important one. The tradition is that Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission they bring antitrust cases and you know they do some administrative work as well to address problems of competition. But, you know, lots of agencies have authority in this area, you know their bank mergers are governed by banking agencies, and you know they're, you know, airline mergers and you know mergers of radio stations and so forth they're often other agencies are involved so it's it's very important that they coordinate and particularly the Department of Labor. So the Department of Labor, there are various components of it, which have a great deal of authority over employers and how they treat workers. And I'm not an expert on the Department of Labor, but I believe that in the past they have not been focused on problems of competition like non competes for example, but they certainly have that power to get to gather information and to coordinate with other agencies to bring other actions as necessary. So I think this could be very important. Thank you for that. And it's great. So, related to that then a question for both of you is, you know, for worker advocates or whether they're unions or just organizations dedicated to supporting workers. What can they do to leverage antitrust policy to help workers, any advice or guidance you can offer to folks who are out there in the field, advocating on behalf of workers. So a quick thought unions should bring antitrust cases. They have in the past. The SEIU has brought, I believe, a few antitrust cases. That was years ago. But there's still a great deal of hesitation but unions are in an excellent position to do this to find out about anti competitive behavior because they often have members who in a particular industry who work in different companies. And so if certain types of parallel behavior occurs that may suggest illegal elusive behavior, non competes, you know, there are other ways that unions can gather information about potentially anti competitive behavior. And, and then actually bring the lawsuit on behalf of their of the union members. So they should, you know, put some effort into thinking about this and investigating. And it'll be interesting to see what they find. Yeah, I, you know, don't want to comment on on on litigation or bring litigation but I do think I will say the White House has met with with a number of unions on on on their interests and I think they're showing a lot of interest and potential in these areas and I think that's very promising. I think that being involved in the policy debates is very important. I'll highlight something that's going on right now. I think it is a an effort to led by the Just Department and the Federal Trade Commission to redo the merger guidelines. And obviously one of the key questions and merger guidelines is what kind of market markets do you assess. And I think people who are interested in labor and worker interest might want to be active in that. For example obviously invite everybody but that's an example, where I think the, the, the input of people into policy would be very, very valuable over. Sorry about that is that the famous mute button. Yes, and then suddenly not getting able to find it. That's, that's, that's very helpful. Just one more question before we'll sort of open things up to some questions that are coming into the audience I did mention to yes I might background and a lot of the work of the center I run has been in the field of workforce development and and also a lot on career and technical education and things like apprenticeships as well, but underlying undergirding a lot of the sort of funding models and just theories of change around education and workforce development is this assumption of competitive markets and kind of human capital theory that, you know, making people, you know, building equipping people with skills and credentials to be more competitive and in the marketplace. So I'm trying to wrap my head around what what does it mean to think about workforce development and education for workers who may be going into very non competitive labor markets and I realize that's a, you know, question that to me that's like where do I where do I take this and into my work and I realize that's not your background but would love any thoughts, just, you know, open in the thoughts on just what what strikes you is sort of what we should be thinking about those of us working in this in this space. Well, Eric is an educator so I guess I'll defer to him former educator. Yeah. Yeah, for lawyers I could talk about educating lawyers but but I won't. Instead, let me let me give you this, the few thoughts about this. So I do think there's a kind of a revolution taking place in in labor economics and even among labor economists there was this assumption of no more or less competitive markets and that's I think increasingly, labor economists are going to talk about what they call monopsony labor monopsony meaning lack of competition in labor markets, and once you move from a competitive model to a monopsony model a lot of things change and sometimes surprising ways. You know, a famous example, before I get to your question is the minimum wage, you know in a competitive labor market if you raise the minimum wage that can lead to unemployment. If you raise the minimum wage that just results in higher wages and actually more potentially more employment. And one of the reasons why people's views have shifted about markets is that the empirical research complicated but it tends to suggest that minimum raising the minimum wage does not reduce employment which supports this view of labor economy. So, you know, a kind of a popular tool among, you know, people Democrats generally people on the left or the center left actually becomes more powerful under the late labor monopsony model but there are other tools that become more complicated and this brings me to your question about workforce development. Now in a competitive market, you know, imagine, you know, the people working in a competitive market and so economists say they should receive a wage that basically matches their productivity. So if the government steps in and offers them training and they get trained, let's just say hypothetically on the weekends or in the evening, they become more productive and that means their wage should go up. They become more productive more revenues come in and the employer becomes afraid of losing that worker to a competitor. So, if the worker says well I'm going to leave unless you raise my wage the employer says fine and so a lot of the gains from the training most of it will actually accrue to the worker. But now let's move to a monopsonized labor market. And to take an extreme case imagine there's just a single employer imagine like a small town somewhere and there's no one accounting firm or one chicken processing plant and that's basically your only choice for a certain set of skills. Well, if the government gives this person training, the person will become more productive and revenues will go up. But now, when the worker says look I'm more productive you should pay me more. The employer is going to think well you know what are you going to do if I don't pay you more right there's no competitor to go to. So the employer will be less inclined to raise the workers wages. Now the employer will probably raise them a bit, but not as much as in a competitive market. So ironically, one effect of training government sponsored training in a monopsonized market is that you're actually increasing the profits of the employers. Depending on how the market is structured, possibly a lot more than you're benefiting the worker. I do want to jump in and say I do want to interrupt myself to say you know, that's the worst case, all these markets are different some markets are very competitive, others are not and so the value of workplace training and so forth will depend a lot on market structure and continue to be valuable in some places and less valuable and other and others but that's something that you have to think about. As you, you know, design and propose workplace workforce development programs. If I can say a word I don't have anything particular to say about training but I do feel that. One reason I'm so excited about the work in this area and so this also the policy development is, you know, it helps us get at this. Which is administration really wants to crack which is how do you create a sustained sort of widespread prosperity. You know which sounds like the kind of thing politician might say but also is really a challenging question. I think we've learned you know through through four years of microeconomics, how to generate wealth but I'm not sure we've learned how you create a sort of broadly prosperous society. And, you know, there's, I think the research being done, and I mean broadly prosperous both among classes, races, you know, regions of the country. So the whole whole country is feels feels that kind of wealth without killing the golden goose. And I think that that you know that is sort of one of the, if you can get that right. In some ways you've really gotten to what a big thing for what we can do for people in this in this country, which is try to sort of, you know have a place where, or have a country that has been the story of this country for a time where people can reliably expect to do better than the generation before them and feel that this is the fabled land of opportunity so maybe I'll just leave it there and turn to our next question or as you like. I'm going to ask one very quick follow up question, which is, again, a lot of to what we do in the workforce development field is labor market gathering labor market information and doing an analyzing local labor markets. How hard is it to determine levels of monopsony or the presence or intensity of monopsonic labor markets is, are there tools available for that sort of thing is this like a common labor market analytic thing I'm not familiar with. Yes, well that these tools have been, you know, developed recently and they really, really what was needed was access to data which is now available their enormous resources. There are different kinds of labor monopsony so that what I'm focused on is concentration, the number of employers that in a certain area that a given type of worker can realistically get a job from. And so their number of papers that just count them up and you know there there are these, there's both government data, which will tell you how many employers are in a particular area. And you know they usually use commuting zone which is a kind of a big it was like a city, and you just count up the number of let's say accounting firms, five, and the number of accountants you know and you have a sense of how much concentration there is. And, and so there's both the government data as I mentioned and there's also data from private companies like Glassdoor Glassdoor operates a platform that people can use to find jobs. There are you know 10s of millions of listings and some of this research has used data from Glassdoor and other kind of platforms intermediaries. There's another type of labor monopsony which is which is a real problem, which is, which is the result of certain workplace frictions that are independent of concentration. So for example if you're working at a job, and you don't like it and you feel like you're not getting paid enough. It's not like just you know switching from Pepsi to Coke, as Tim was mentioning before, you have to do a search you have to do interviews that's all very costly. And that's another source of friction that gives the employer the ability to suppress wages, that too can be measured and has been measured. Basically you can kind of look at how frequently people change jobs, I mean it's complicated but that's basically what you can look at and, and, and you know if wages change, whether people, let's suppose wages, you know go down for some reason because of some kind of recession, do people leave or do they stay where they are that's another way that you can measure the degree of labor monopsony and now there are you know dozens and dozens of studies that look at this and they find actually people don't change their jobs, you know, very much when their wages change and everybody was listening, you know, and, and a new Mary Alice and you Tim as well I mean you can just ask yourself is my, if my employer just said I'm going to cut your wage by 10% you know, would you quit. I think people would, but most people, you know, for me for example, what would I why shouldn't say this in case my Dean here's but if they if you cut my, you know my wage. I've got family here you know my wife is here, you know I can't really just up and leave and find another employer. So this, these types of frictions are very important, but they are well documented and available to the public if you're interested. I'm the rare example of person who took a job to for a pay cut. I don't know how you measure that but anyway. Don't tell your employer just don't tell your employer. Okay, we do have some questions from the audience I'm going to start with the first one here which is, what can be done to hold companies accountable when they pursue promise a merger will create jobs, but then lay off workers once the transaction is approved. That is a very good question and I think a real challenge for for antitrust law which is, you know the typical merger review process and is a projection and involves a enormous number of promises often of efficiencies or jobs are, you know, likewise, and, you know, and if they are not approved by this court or agency though it's true then then the merger I wouldn't say technically is approved but is not acted on. I will say that in the executive order on competition, we mentioned that we said the exact that the, that the agencies should be aware that they can challenge mergers retroactively and not forget that I think they know that. And it is clear under the law that you can challenge a merger retroactively, but somehow there's been sort of a campaign to pretend that's not true. But it is true. And without mentioning to the cases there's a major litigation going on right now which is in fact a retroactive challenge to a merger under section two of the of the Sherman act so the legal authority is there to act. And in fact I can mention a case that was completed within the last couple years there was an example. It was a case around doors or something like that. Carl Shapiro was the was the expert economist, and it was a retroactive challenge to a merger of door manufacturers when they had just lied to the agencies about what was going to happen it was private challenge actually. And so that that is one avenue I would suggest that's possibility. Yeah, I mean and private litigation also in principle, the workers, if they're fired or their wages go down. And other conditions are met they should be able to bring an antitrust class action against the merged entity. And you know they should at least be able to obtain damages for lost wages. And there may not be able to get the merger unwound, but you know this, this has never happened. So I mean, in law, often the law, you know kind of supports you but the practicalities logistics, the complexities may defeat any such may defeat any such effort. I wouldn't say it's never happened. We're workers, we're workers have done we're workers sorry. Retroactive merger challenges standard oil, for example, sorry. Right. Standard oil famous interest case in fact was a retroactive challenge to a series of mergers. I was just talking about workers. Right. Our next question is again about about litigation that the Sherman, the Sherman Act and antitrust laws are notoriously broad. Given the Lochnerian bent of the Supreme Court. How will this worker center view of antitrust survive the courts. Well, it's hard to say, you know, and the question is a good one. I mean what I've been trying to argue in my work is that, you know, there's nothing radical about thinking that antitrust law should apply to labor markets in fact. The real Lochnerian court in the 1920s recognized a case by semen against their employers in California. So, you know, the idea that the antitrust apply antitrust law applies to labor markets, it shouldn't be controversial. And so there are probably a lot of well hanging fruit that even, you know, a court that tends to be skeptical of challenges to businesses should be willing to recognize. And the court did, you know, just in the recent Austin case which involved, you know, the, the NCAA, the sports leagues, you know it said yeah, sure antitrust law applies to workers in this case the workers were student athletes. You know the courts should be open to this I think the real problem is more practical. They're not used to these cases, you know, lawyers aren't used to these cases, they're very complicated. So if they're brought in the right way by the right people with good facts. I'm optimistic that that at least some progress will be made. I think the real problem with with the current Supreme Court and judges is they're just kind of hostile to antitrust law of all types, not not just you know worker related antitrust law and that that's going to require probably legislation to overcome. Tim, any thoughts or. Yeah. Okay. Here's another question with large companies able to depress wages in an obscenistic markets presumably, how does that fit in with the popular story of wages as the primary driver of inflation to certainly something we're hearing a lot about right now. Any thoughts on that. Well, wages as the primary driver inflation I mean there's there's some, let's see, there's some complicated points going around I think, you know, there's inflation right now, which is driven by all kinds of factors supply chain disruption, maybe government debt, you know there's a lot of debate going on. I don't think people think that inflation is being driven by. Well, it couldn't be driven by wage suppression, right. So if wage suppression is occurring you wouldn't, you wouldn't see a lot of inflation. You know I wouldn't say as a general matter that the concentration of labor markets is related to any kind of trend, like rising inflation today, or even the declining. The decline in the labor share of output because the evidence such as it is suggests that this problem has been around for a long time, just the people haven't recognized it. So, I don't, you know, I'm not sure what I'm not a macro economist I'm not sure what the relationship might be at the moment between labor markets and inflation but you know I don't think it's really an antitrust issue. Next question, unless you had something on that. So, here's a question that says, you know, oligopoly enabled the big three automakers in the 1950s to pay high wages and to pass on the class is the difference with the hospitals that Eric Posner cited that those nurses in those hospitals in Texas that you're talking about were not unionized is that the big difference between so if you're operating in an oligopolistic labor markets is unionization the thing that will make the difference in terms of who pays the cost. Yeah, so, so if. So if you have, let's say auto manufacturers. Well, it's complicated so if they're not the opportunity they can charge prices above the competitive price so cars in the old days were expensive, because there wasn't much competition between. Between the car manufacturers, there are only three of them. Meanwhile, in the labor markets, you know, they're only, they're only three employers who hire people to construct cars, right. So there's also a lot of al gobson is the technical term in the labor market. With market power we would expect the car companies to suppress wages in the labor market. But but the labor market is unionized as you mentioned and so the unions are able to aggregate the power of workers and negotiate a wage which is higher than you know the monopsony or the oligopsony wage. So unions are probably a very important factor now missing factor and in many of these papers, economists do look at unions like the hospital merger paper I told you about. They compared mergers where the workers were unionized and mergers where they're not unionized, and where the workers were unionized there wasn't the, the, the decline and wage growth that there was where the workers were were were not unionized. You know, I think unions are a big part of this. I think people don't understand you know the economists don't understand unions as well as they understand ununionized markets because it's kind of hard to compare a market that's unionized and a market that's not unionized because they're they're different and lots of different ways. There is a lot of evidence that there's a wage premium when for unionized people. And, and you know and that's true, that's more likely to be true probably you know I'm not in an oligopsinized I'm an optionized market and in a competitive way. I just one thing you know I'm not close to the data on that but the way Eric is. I wonder also if there's a possibility. This may violate the rules of an economic conversation but if culture, you know if culture and corporate culture has changed in ways that matter since 1950s in other words, you know management. I think today is is rewarded for generally for maximization of shareholder welfare and value most most straightforwardly. You know, another contributing explanation maybe that there was a sort of different commitment to the sense that having well paid workers was a representation of success, but that's just another maybe factor in there. I mean I think that's very important you know former student of mine named Samuel Milner recently wrote a book about this era after World War two up until about the 70s. And you know other historians have studied it as well but there was a kind of an agreement. And among the, the, the, you know, the big firms and the oligopsinized industries steel, cut autos and so forth to keep wages going up, and the government actually kind of got involved and would encourage this. And, you know, at the same time, they had some oligopoly power as well. So they could, you know, raise prices raise wages, and then you know there's controversy over ultimately whether this is a good or a bad thing in the long run some people think it led to inflation. And it was clearly a very different era from ours where I do think there's a kind of a cultural or intellectual change, which has encouraged the management of large firms to just you know, suppress wages the best they can you know ideally, you know ideally, I don't know I don't know if that's a good idea or something like that. But, but, or I say at least automation is less bad and suppressing people's wages. But, but, you know, that was less true for the big industries, half a century ago. Well thank you both this has been just an excellent conversation very appreciative and if you, if either of you have any final comments or thoughts you wanted to share, please do. You know, I just, first I really appreciate people have taken a list of this. And I do think we're, you know, we're in, we're in a moment here and it's a good time to rethink much of what has been the conventional wisdom for for a long period I think are thinking a huge contribution in that respect. The administration is also, you know, I think this administration is committed to, you know, rethinking some of the questions of what it really means to have an economy that works for everybody. And, you know, along all kinds of lines so I think these kind of conversations are part of part of that. And again thanks for the opportunity to be here. Let me say something going back to a point to me, and I think this is something that a lot of people don't understand so this idea that antitrust law should be used in labor markets, okay so it's not, as I tried to say before a radical idea it's not a left wing idea or a communist idea or anything like that, it's just an idea based on the view, the very conventional view in the United States that pre markets competitive markets are good. And what's striking about this in particular is that unlike you know other types of schemes to try to help the worst off like taxing and and transferring resources. You know people object to that, in part because they don't want to pay higher taxes but they're worried that it will reduce incentives to work and be a drag on the economy. And this is that you know anti competitive behavior and labor markets and product markets already is a bad is a drag on the economy, and it's bad for lower income people. Okay, so if it's so strong or antitrust enforcement in labor markets and product markets as well should should lead not only to higher wages, but lower prices and more output so the, the pie should get bigger, everybody should, you know become better off in a very general level, but also these workers you know their wages will go up. And that's from a standpoint of equity, and you know the kind of the social fabric which is which has been fraying I think that's that's very important. So I think this is an exciting thing to think about. I think that students and academics will put, you know more energy into thinking about this and the policymakers will as well. And thank you very much, Mary Alice for having me on. Yeah, I gotta add that this is you know this is this is not this is not area, this is an area where there's this. I remember actually when I was in the Obama administration that first it's like labor antitrust. So much work to be done this area and you know Eric say a lot of people are doing it but it is a ripe area for you know students academics policy. Think tanks, whatever to sort of to take some time thinking about and we are, as I said very the administration policy councils, you know are interested or Abbott consumers of the materials are being generated. So, thanks again, Mary. And thanks again to both of you and thanks to all of you who joined us today.