Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/68513 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
Reihe Ökonomie / Economics Series No. 273
Publisher: 
Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS), Vienna
Abstract: 
Do apparently large minimum wage increases in an environment of straightened economic circumstances produce clearer evidence of disemployment effects than is typically reported in the new economics of the minimum wage? The present paper augments the sparse literature covering the very latest increases in the U.S. minimum wage, using three different data sets and the principal estimation strategies for handling geographically-disparate trends. Despite the seemingly more favorable milieu for identifying displacement effects, and although our treatment calls into question one well-received estimation strategy, our preferred specification generally fails to support a finding of negative employment effects. That is to say, minimum-wage workers are apparently concentrated in sectors of the economy for which the labor demand response to statutory wage hikes is minimal. Popular concern with a recessionary multiplier thus seems overdone.
Subjects: 
minimum wages
disemployment
earnings
low-wage sectors
geographically-disparate employment trends
recession
JEL: 
J2
J3
J4
J8
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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