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.
Working Papers
(7) Welfare Effects of Buyer and Seller Power (with Mert Demirer)
(6) Labor-Market Power, Deadweight Loss, and Technology Adoption
August 2025 – PDF
Published and Accepted
(5) Estimating Factor Price Markdowns using Production Models (with Yingjie Wu and Mingzhi Xu)
International Journal of Industrial Organization (Special Issue EARIE), Forthcoming, June 2025
(4) Exploiting or Augmenting Labor? (with Yingjie Wu and Mingzhi Xu)
American Economic Review: Insights, Forthcoming, June 2025
(3) Colluding Against Workers (with Vincent Delabastita)
Journal of Political Economy, 133(6) pp. 1796-1839, June 2025
(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
In Progress
Conduct in U.S. Labor Markets (with Bradley Setzler and Chen Yeh )