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Rural Oligarchy and Its Legal Sources
Abstract
Rural Americans face higher levels of labor market concentration and employer power, or monopsony, than urban Americans. Rural employers’ ability to profitably set low wages, slow wage growth, reduce hiring, and maintain unsafe, low-quality working conditions is not merely the product of market forces and the structure of low-density labor markets. It is instead very much the product of law and economic policy. This Article offers a taxonomy of the legal sources of rural employer power in federal, state, and local laws, from antitrust, labor and employment, trade, and employment law and policy at the federal level to state and local financing law, property law and land policy, and state and local tax laws. Surveying these levers of legal monopsony is a crucial first step for analyzing the sources of oligarchy in rural communities and thinking through legal and institutional design solutions to combat it.
