Abstract
Recent studies that have investigated the relationship between the monopsony power of school districts and teachers' salaries have reached conflicting conclusions. The authors of this paper argue that the discrepancies among previous studies may be due to the arbitrary demarcation of the boundaries of teacher labor markets and the use of faulty measures of monopsony. Using a new procedure for defining teacher labor market boundaries and several alternative indices of concentration, this study finds evidence of monopsonistic activity in local teacher labor markets in Pennsylvania. The monopsony wage effects are small, however, and are present mainly at the mid-to-upper ranges of the bachelor's degree salary scale.
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