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1 1. There is an extensive literature explaining some of the changes in the economic structure that have contributed to the growth in economic concentration. See, for instance, Stiglitz (2019) and the references cited there. Some of these changes are alluded to briefly in the discussion in this introductory chapter.

2 2. Monopsony is on the buyer side what monopoly is on the seller side. A monopolist is the only provider of a good, a monopsonist is the only buyer of a good. When firms have market power, they have significant power to raise prices, losing only a limited amount of sales; we often loosely say they have monopoly power. Similarly, buyers with market power have the power to suppress the prices of what they buy. This means an employer with market power—what economists refer to as monopsony power—has the power to suppress wages.

3 3. In a variety of other contexts, firms have similarly designed contracts to restrain competition. Examples are the merchant restraints imposed by credit card companies and the restrictions that the airline reservation systems impose on the airlines that have no choice but to use their systems. A refrain heard throughout this book—that business-friendly courts have too often sustained these contracts—is reflected in these other contexts as well (as in the Supreme Court case of Ohio v. American Express Co.).

4 4. See also the parallel study for Europe (Stiglitz, Dougherty, and the Foundation for European Progressive Studies 2020).

5 5. Similarly, in Europe there has been an assault on industry and nationwide bargaining in an attempt to undermine the effectiveness of unions. Recent decisions of the European Commission may be reversing these trends.

6 6. In Europe the manner in which collective bargaining is conducted—the move away from sectoral and national bargaining—has also undermined the power of unions. This change has often been encouraged by legislation; reversing the legislation would help restore the power of unions.

7 7. It is important to recognize that on the firm side there can be some competition in a market in which each firm has a high level of market power; similarly, on the buyer side there can be some competition, but each employer can still have considerable market power.

8 8. Standard measures of the share of labor do not adequately reflect the decreasing share of workers, for such statistics typically include bankers, CEOs, and others who officially work for others but who are clearly not workers in the traditional sense of the word. Excluding the top 1 percent of “workers” shows a dramatic decline in workers’ share in national income (Giovannoni 2014).