you know you did well when your professor personally responds to your discussion post - something i think tumblr might like, on the economic concept of monopsony:
(Note this is a news article summary for a first year accounting course)
https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2026/04/21/g-s1-118071/the-hidden-power-keeping-wages-low Links to an external site.
The hidden power keeping wages low by Greg Rosalsky 04-21-2026
This article is kind of long and is about the history of wages and the economic powers that drive them. Several books were mentioned, which I haven't read to fully understand their position, although I plan to read them at some point. For reference, I did not read the original article, just this sequel.
Essentially, a young economist named Joan Robinson coined the term "monopsony" after determining an employer can obtain a sort of monopoly on workers - monopsony being the "buyer" version of monopoly. This is in direct contrast to still prevailing economic theories of perfect competition - the idea that workers have equal choice of companies to work for. Instead, in each industry, there are typically about three employers, and oftentimes, these employers may enforce "no-poaching" agreements, wherein they collude to make it harder for employees to work someplace else. These agreements are generally illegal, although they are still pervasive, one major example between Apple and Google employees, signed off on by the CEOs themselves.
This compounds with the friction of having to search for and go through a lengthy interview process involving time-consuming paperwork that is often rejected. There are also nonfinancial reasons a worker may stay with a company, either for convenience or coworkers, some sort of emotional attachment to a company. Arindrajit Dube calls this trio of factors reinforcing monospony power the "triumvirate of endemic monopsony."
This information contrasts with the argument that minimum wages cause unemployment to rise - a theory that has been debunked by David Card, who receied a Nobel Prize in economics for his work. Higher wages have more benefits to employees, reduce turnover, and increase productivity. This is particularly relevant to the innovation/learning perspective of a balanced scorecard, under employee satisfaction and turnover. Higher wages mean less money spent on training, higher employee satisfaction, lower turnover, and potentially more new products from increased productivity.
Considering all of the information in this article, I have a few questions to consider, one of which being, just how long has monopsony power been a factor in the economy? Joan Robinson coined the term in tthe 1930s with her book The Economics of Imperfect Competition, but it may have existed long before that, as I know at the start of the 20th century is when corporations started to take off. And as the article states, monopoly has existed since at least the 16th century, so it sounds like it may go back much further than that.
