Marshall Steinbaum

I have the Utah state legislature wrapped around my finger.

Just witnessed something good happen in Utah state politics. Bill that would restrict non-compete agreements just passed out of committee with a 10-3 vote le.utah.gov/~2026/bills/...

The postal network as economic infrastructure: Evidence from rural small businesses | Brookings Elena Patel explains research highlighting the importance of the U.S. postal service in small business activity in rural communities.

Elena Patel of @brookings.edu Rural counties with closer access to post offices consistently have higher levels of small-business activity, with the strongest relationships concentrated in sectors that account for a large share of rural self-employment. www.brookings.edu/articles/the...

I am just gonna say it, these guys are completely emasculated by the knowledge that they have been out-organized by a group that is significantly made up of women, and all the bullshit call of duty nonsense is cope for their wounded egos bsky.app/profile/jeet...

Argula von Grumbach admonishing the professoriate of Ingolstadt for expelling a Lutheran student. (From Lyndal Roper’s Summer of Fire and Blood)

@jakemgrumbach.bsky.social a relative of yours?

Argula von Grumbach admonishing the professoriate of Ingolstadt for expelling a Lutheran student. (From Lyndal Roper’s Summer of Fire and Blood)

One of many mechanisms leading to ever-greater stratification in the academy.

I assume people with appointments in departments where those referees might one day want a job are spared this extremely demoralizing experience.

One thing that happens to you if you research controversial topics is that referees feel free to completely shirk their duty to read & understand your paper in peer review, instead resorting to groundless insults and rank unprofessionalism. #EconSky

New article alert 🚨: “An Antitrust Exemption for Collective Bargaining by Independent Contractors,” by Vincent Mancini, @econmarshall.bsky.social, and Robert Stutchbury.

"The public wants access to a high-quality, reasonably-priced higher education, and we have to give it to them," says @econmarshall.bsky.social. newrepublic.com/article/2054...

"The elite critique of higher education is you have a bunch of overpaid, over-confident professors who aren't doing anything that's really worthwhile for the public. What I think is wrong with the higher education system is plutocracy," says @econmarshall.bsky.social. newrepublic.com/article/2054...

Here's the paper itself. The discussion was highly engaging if I do say so myself--(thanks to Perry) we really did get to the heart of the current higher ed policy debate.
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marshallsteinbaum.org/wp-content/u...

Trump Is Destroying Higher Ed. Here’s How Democrats Can Rebuild It University of Utah professor Marshall Steinbaum says American higher education should be reformed so we don’t have well-funded colleges for rich students and underfunded ones that lower-income people ...

Last week I discussed my paper "Rebuilding American Higher Education: from an Engine of Inequality to a Pillar of the Public Interest" (coauthored @andrewelrod.bsky.social @higheredlabor.bsky.social) w/@perrybaconjr.bsky.social at @newrepublic.com
newrepublic.com/article/2054...
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Interesting. I’m always skeptical of new antitrust exemptions and have frequently suggested getting rid of many of them (especially ones related to insurance). That said, this proposal and the one related to musicians vs. streaming services solve real problems.

That is totally up in the air jurisprudentially, just as the "right" counterfactual for the labor market is contested within labor economics. MPL is only one candidate, one with considerable weaknesses.

There's no way around the need for a "but for" in that application, and possibly others.

I don't consider myself one who thinks marginal cost is a good normative benchmark. It has analytical uses, for example in estimating antitrust damages in monopsony cases.

You want Sectoral Bargaining? I'll show you Sectoral Bargaining!

[not "you" you, but ratherin the style of Barton Fink]

We thank @stevesalop.bsky.social for the invitation to join ALJ’s symposium in the first place, as well as Steve & Andreas Reindl for helpful comments & Robby Robertson for editing. Comments welcome.
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We claim this would democratize and decentralize a hierarchical economy while taking the fissured workplace and the entrepreneurial aspirations of the individuals who inhabit it seriously.
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The point is to encourage autonomous horizontal collective action by upstream platform counterparties, by franchisees, by gig workers, and by other disempowered nominally-independent but in reality controlled entrepreneurs.
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Under our proposed exemption, that conduct would be immune from Section 1 liability, but still exposed under S.2, i.e. if it evolves into market dominance in its own right. [UMW would also be excluded because its members were & are employees, not ICs.]
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And note that the reason the UMW was able to extract that provision in the first place was zealous representation of a lockstep loyal membership against employer and government coercion, going back decades. i.e. what antitrust people refer to as “competition on the merits.”
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Platform MFNs are subject to a Rule of Reason analysis in federal antitrust jurisprudence, but the same conduct by a union is per se illegal.
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But note that *this is exactly the same conduct as a platform Most-Favored Nation clause*: use bilateral dominance to penalize counterparties for doing business with your lower-price rivals on more favorable terms.
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The Supreme Court, and Oliver Williamson, agreed that this was an anti-competitive barrier to entry by low-cost operators.
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Take a case like UMW v. Pennington, which defines the outer boundary of the “non-statutory labor exemption.” The challenged conduct was a CBA requiring mine operators to pay a penalty to the UMW pension fund for sourcing orders from non-union mines.
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This is perhaps the most radical scholarly work I have ever written & managed to publish, because it would effectively dissolve what @sanjukta.bsky.social calls the “Firm Exemption”: the privilege of vertical coordination preferentially accorded to capitalistic corporations. /3