scholarly journals The Econometrics and Economics of the Employment Effects of Minimum Wages: Getting from Known Unknowns to Known Knowns

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Neumark
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Minimum Wage ◽  
Past Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Minimum Wages ◽  
Definitive Answer ◽  
Employment Effects ◽  
Conflicting Evidence ◽  
Known Unknowns ◽  
Wage Increases

Abstract I discuss the econometrics and the economics of past research on the effects of minimum wages on employment in the United States. My intent is to try to identify key questions raised in the recent literature, and some from the earlier literature, which I think hold the most promise for understanding the conflicting evidence and arriving at a more definitive answer about the employment effects of minimum wages. My secondary goal is to discuss how we can narrow the range of uncertainty about the likely effects of the large minimum wage increases becoming more prevalent in the United States. I discuss some insights from both theory and past evidence that may be informative about the effects of high minimum wages, and try to emphasize what research can be done now and in the near future to provide useful evidence to policymakers on the results of the coming high minimum wage experiment, whether in the United States or in other countries.

scholarly journals The Employment Effects of Minimum Wages: Some Questions We Need to Answer

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Neumark
Keyword(s):  
Past Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Minimum Wages ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Employment Effects ◽  
The Past ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Conflicting Evidence ◽  
On Line ◽  
Very High

The literature on the employment effects of minimum wages is about a century old, and includes hundreds of studies. Yet the debate among researchers about the employment effects of minimum wages remains intense and unsettled. Questions have arisen in the past research that, if answered, may prove most useful in making sense of the conflicting evidence. However, additional questions should be considered to better inform the policy debate, in particular in the context of the very high minimum wages coming on line in the United States, about which past research is quite uninformative.

The Effects of Minimum Wages on the Distribution of Changes in Regional Employment in the United States

1979 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-392
Author(s):  
J W Mixon ◽  
N D Uri
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Minimum Wage ◽  
Seasonal Cycle ◽  
Work Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Minimum Wages ◽  
Employment Patterns ◽  
Short Run ◽  
Minimum Wage Legislation ◽  
The Impact

This study investigates the manner in which increases in the minimum wage have altered the distribution of employment and the sensitivity to short-run changes of employment among states in the United States. Further, by focusing on the distribution of employment and on how that distribution changes over the seasonal cycle, estimates of some aspects of the impact of the minimum wage that have not heretofore been analyzed have been developed. The evidence indicates that increases in the minimum wage over the period 1947–1976 have had a significant impact on employment patterns. Minimum-wage legislation has had the effect of decreasing the share of projected employment and increasing vulnerability to cyclical changes in employment for the group of workers most marginal to the work force—low-wage employees.

scholarly journals Minimum wages in monopsonistic labor markets

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis F. Munguía Corella
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Minimum Wage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Minimum Wages ◽  
Perfect Competition ◽  
External Shocks ◽  
Omitted Variables ◽  
Heterogeneous Effects ◽  
Teenage Employment

AbstractOver the last 30 years, researchers have disputed the mixed evidence of the effect of the minimum wage on teenage employment in the United States. Whenever the minimum wage has positive or no effects on employment, they appeal to monopsony models to explain their results. However, very few of these studies have empirically tested whether their results are due to monopsonistic characteristics in the labor markets. In this article, I estimate the effects of the minimum wage for the United States under concentrated labor markets and low-mobility jobs (two variables that measure monopsony), identify heterogeneous effects among different scenarios derived from the monopsony model, and provide a plausible explanation of the mixed results about the minimum wage effects in the literature. My main findings indicate that minimum wages have an elasticity to teenage employment of −0.418 under perfect competition, which is, as expected, much higher than the usual results in the literature. If the monopsony variable is one standard deviation higher than the baseline, it implies a positive change in elasticity of 0.05. The minimum wage has a positive insignificant effect between 0.04 and 0.29 under full monopsonistic labor markets. The results are consistent among different specifications and in controlling for possible external shocks and omitted variables.

scholarly journals The Minimum Wage Affects Them All: Evidence on Employment Spillovers in the Roofing Sector

2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 282-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bodo Aretz ◽  
Terry Gregory ◽  
Melanie Arntz
Keyword(s):  
Minimum Wage ◽  
Scale Effects ◽  
Minimum Wages ◽  
Wage Distribution ◽  
Employment Effects ◽  
Eastern Germany

Abstract This study contributes to the sparse literature on employment spillovers of minimum wages. We exploit the minimum wage introduction and subsequent increases in the German roofing sector that gave rise to an internationally unprecedented hard bite of a minimum wage. We look at the chances of remaining employed in the roofing sector for workers with and without a binding minimum wage and use the plumbing sector that is not subject to a minimum wage as a suitable benchmark sector. By estimating the counterfactual wage that plumbers would receive in the roofing sector given their characteristics, we are able to identify employment effects along the entire wage distribution. The results indicate that the chances for roofers to remain employed in the sector in eastern Germany deteriorated along the entire wage distribution. Such employment spillovers to workers without a binding minimum wage may result from scale effects and/or capital-labour substitution.

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