One competitive-market explanation of interindustry wage differentials that is not challenged by the persistence of these differentials is that they are due to differences across workers in unobserved ability or quality. In contrast, this paper explores the unobserved ability hypothesis by using...

Just as the standard two-way fixed effects model for estimating the impact of minimum wages on employment has been sharply criticized for its neglect of spatial heterogeneity so, too, have the latest models been attacked for their uncritical use of state- or county-specific linear trends (and...

Recent attempts to incorporate spatial heterogeneity in minimum-wage employment models have been attacked for using overly simplistic trend controls, and for neglecting the potential impact on employment growth. We investigate whether such considerations call into question our earlier findings...

Previous studies have often suggested that wives experience a decline in labor-market fortunes after an internal migration of a married couple. This evidence is consistent with wives being 'tied movers' on average. I use the British Household Panel Survey to consider the extent to which wive...

Do seemingly large minimum-wage increases in an environment of deep recession produce clearer evidence of disemployment than is often observed in the modern minimum wage literature? This paper uses three data sets to examine the employment effects of the most recent increases in the U.S. minimum...

Recent attempts to incorporate spatial heterogeneity in minimum-wage employment models have been attacked for using overly simplistic trend controls, and for neglecting the potential impact on employment growth. We investigate whether such considerations call into question our earlier findings...

This paper investigates the impact on earnings and employment of substantive increases in the minimum wage under the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007. Against the backdrop of a thin contemporary literature offering mixed results, our study uses three different data sets, and three different...

Features of the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program and the social security retirement system interact to create incentives for prospective participants in the aged portion of SSI to withdraw from the labor force and make an early old age insurance (OAI) claim under social security. This...

The potential benefits of higher minimum wages come from the higher wages for affected workers, some of whom are in low-income families. The potential downside is that a higher minimum wage may discourage employers from using the low-wage, low-skill workers that minimum wages are intended to...

The authors estimate the effects of the interactions between the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and minimum wages on labor market outcomes. They use information on policy variation from the Department of Labor's Monthly Labor Review, reports published by the Center on Budget and Policy...