Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/34794 
Year of Publication: 
2008
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 3300
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We use county-level data on employment and earnings in the restaurant-and-bar sector to evaluate the impact of minimum wage changes on low-wage labor markets. Our empirical approach is similar to the literature that has used state-level panel data to estimate minimum-wage impacts, with the difference that we focus on a particular sector rather than demographic group. Our estimated models are consistent with a simple competitive model of the restaurant-and-bar labor market in which supply-and-demand factors affect both the equilibrium outcome and the probability that a minimum wage will be binding in any given time period. Our evidence does not suggest that minimum wages reduce employment in the overall restaurant-and-bar sector, after controls for trends in sector employment at the county level are incorporated in the model. Employment in this sector appears to exhibit a downward long-term trend in states that have increased their minimum wages relative to states that have not, thereby predisposing fixed-effects estimates towards finding negative employment effects.
Subjects: 
Minimum wages
wages and employment
county-level data
spatial trends
JEL: 
J23
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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