I have a cleaning woman who comes to my house with a crew of three people. She makes about 23, 24 dollars an hour which is roughly three times the federal minimum wage. They don't have a union. Is seems to me very limited in the way that bargaining power is talked about as an important part of labor market outcomes. All this stuff about bargaining power and institutions, i don't see why i relevant.
Daron Acemoglu, the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his new paper co-authored with James Robinson, "The Rise and Fall of General Laws of Capitalism," a critique of Thomas Piketty, Karl Marx, and other thinkers who have tried to explain patterns of data as inevitable "laws" without regard to institutions. Acemoglu and Roberts also discuss labor unions, labor markets, and inequality.