Central bankers have having another look at how big companies affect wages and prices
Central bankers love models but the problem is that they don't work if you have deliberate inference -- like a company acting as a monopoly or a group of companies colluding.
That's changing and one of the big topics at Jackson Hole was how companies are skewing the rules of economics to make it more difficult to set policy and create wage inflation.
The New York Times has more on the new debates:
:Mainstream economists are discussing questions like whether "monopsony" - the outsize power of a few consolidated employers - is part of the problem of low wage growth. They are looking at whether the "superstar firms" that dominate many leading industries are responsible for sluggish investment spending. And they're exploring whether there is an "Amazon Effect" in which fast-changing pricing algorithms by the online retailer and its rivals mean bigger swings in inflation."
