The Minimum Wage Once Again

There is a great cognitive dissonance between what is commonly taught in economics and what passes for sound public policy analysis within the beltway of Washington D.C. Nowhere is a more stark example of this to be found than in the case of the minimum wage law. Many students know that a minimum wage law exacerbates unemployment, particularly for low-skilled, youthful, and minority males. Card and Krueger (1994, p. 792) even characterize this claim as "the central prediction of the textbook model of the minimum wage," but attempt to undermine it their article