The Economics of Work with Ben Zweig2 Sep

Ioana Marinescu - Why Workers Are Underpaid, and What We Could Do About It

Most people earn less than they're worth. Not because they're not productive, but because the labor market isn't nearly as competitive as it could be.

In this episode, Ben sits down with Ioana Marinescu, professor at Penn and one of the leading researchers on labor market power, to dig into what monopsony actually means, why it matters, and what it would take to fix it.

Topics covered:

What a perfectly competitive labor market would look like and how far we are from it
Why the problem isn't just low wages but also hours, conditions, scheduling, and the terms of work that workers can't individually negotiate
Why unions and competition aren't simply substitutes
How to define a labor market
The sleepy monopolist hypothesis: whether product market concentration reduces firms' incentive to hire the best people
Non-compete agreements
Job search and online platforms: how the structure of matching markets shapes who finds work, at what wage, and how quickly
Why AI in public policy may be one of the most important and underrated frontiers

About Ioana Marinescu: Ioana Marinescu is a professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania and a research associate at the NBER. Her research spans labor market competition and monopsony, online job search, non-compete agreements, and the labor market effects of basic income programs. She is one of the leading voices applying antitrust frameworks to labor markets.

Check out Ioana's website

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