Michael Rubens is an Assistant Professor of Economics at UCLA and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research is in the field of industrial organization and covers topics related to vertical contracting, monopsony/oligopsony power, and firm productivity.

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Working Papers

(7) Welfare Effects of Buyer and Seller Power (with Mert Demirer)

August 2025 – PDF NBER WP

(6) Labor-Market Power, Deadweight Loss, and Technology Adoption

August 2025  – PDF

Published and Accepted

(5) Exploiting or Augmenting Labor? (with Yingjie Wu and Mingzhi Xu)

American Economic Review: Insights, Forthcoming, June 2025

PDF Appendix

(4) Estimating Factor Price Markdowns using Production Models (with Yingjie Wu and Mingzhi Xu)

International Journal of Industrial Organization , 102(103177), September 2025 (Special Issue EARIE)

PDF

(3) Colluding Against Workers (with Vincent Delabastita)

Journal of Political Economy, 133(6) pp. 1796-1839, June 2025

PDF Appendix Replication

(2) Market Structure, Oligopsony Power, and Productivity

American Economic Review, 113(9) pp. 2382-2410, September 2023

PDF Appendix Replication VoxDev Article Chicago Booth Review

(1) Management, Productivity, and Technology Choices: Evidence from U.S. Mining Schools

RAND Journal of Economics, 54(1), pp. 165-186 , March 2023

PDF Appendix Replication

In Progress

Conduct in U.S. Labor Markets (with Bradley Setzler and Chen Yeh )