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Todd Sorensen

UC Merced, USA, and IZA, Germany

Often academic articles are written in a way that makes them inaccessible for those outside of academia. WoL will increase the accessibility of research on important topics in labor economics, allowing for better informed policy making. Academic research sometimes can even be inaccessible for scholars in different fields and disciplines. WoL will help keep more scholars up to date on recent findings in labor economics, leading to better academic research

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

Associate Teaching Professor at UC Merced, USA

Research interest

Migration, labor market, wages, worker mobility

Website

https://economics.ucmerced.edu/content/todd-sorensen

Past positions

Assistant Professor, University of Nevada, Reno, 2014-2022; Assistant Professor, University of California, Riverside, 2007–2014

Qualifications

PhD Economics, University of Arizona, 2007

Selected publications

  • "Inter-firm mobility and return migration patterns of skilled guest workers." Journal of Population Economics (2016) (with B. Depew and P. Norlander).

  • "On input market frictions and estimation of factors demand." Southern Economic Journal 80:3 (2014): 772–781 (with A. Dupuy).

  • "The elasticity of labor supply to the firm over the business cycle." Labour Economics 24 (2013): 196–204 (with B. Depew).

  • "Race and gender sentencing under federal sentencing guidelines." American Economic Review 102:3 (2012): 256–260 (with S. Sarnikar and R. Oaxaca).

  • "A laboratory study of auctions with a buy price." Economic Inquiry 51 (2013): 1357–1373 (with Y. Durham, M. Roelofs, and S. Standifird).

article(s)

  • Do firms’ wage-setting powers increase during recessions?

    Monopsony models question the classic view of wage-setting and reveal a new reason why wages may decrease during recessions

    Todd Sorensen, April 2017
    Traditional models of the labor market typically assume that wages are set by the market, not the firm. However, over the last 15 years, a growing body of empirical research has provided evidence against this assumption. Recent studies suggest that a monopsonistic model, where individual firms and not the market set wages, may be more appropriate. This model attributes more wage-setting power to firms, particularly during economic downturns, which helps explain why wages decrease during recessions. This holds important implications for policymakers attempting to combat lost worker income during economic downturns.
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