The UK national minimum wage's impact on productivity

Low pay poses issues for managers internationally. We examine productivity in low-paying sectors in Britain, since the National Minimum Wage’s (NMW) introduction. We use a multiple channel analytical strategy, emphasising the wage-incentives channel and linking it to a model of unobserved productivity. We estimate firm-specific productivity measures and aggregate them to the level of low-paying sectors. Difference-in-differences analysis illustrates that the NMW positively affected aggregate low-paying sector productivity. These findings highlight increased wages’ incentive effects with implications for management practice and public policy since ‘living’ wages may be productivity enhancing.