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)

February 2025 – PDF NBER WP

(6) Labor Market Power and Factor-Biased Technology Adoption

June 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), Accepted, June 2025

PDF

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

American Economic Review: Insights, Accepted, June 2025

PDF Appendix

(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 )