The Bias Against Low-Wage Labor Markets in Merger Analysis

Why are labor harms so rarely pled in antitrust cases? One factor may be the bias against low-wage labor markets in merger analysis. This bias treats the exact same employee behavior as rational in high-wage markets and irrational in low-wage markets. This article concludes with recommendations on how to better account for labor effects more generally in antitrust.

Anant Raut¹

I. INTRODUCTION

Blistering critiques of the last five decades of antitrust