This paper focuses on the role of minimum wages, tax and benefit policies in protecting workers against financial poverty, covering 21 European countries with a national minimum wage and three US States (New Jersey, Nebraska and Texas). It is shown that only for single persons and only in a...

International comparisons of minimum-wage levels have largely focused on the gross value of minimum wages, ignoring the effects of taxation on both labour costs and the net income of employees. This paper presents estimates of the tax burdens facing minimum-wage workers. These are used as a...

Both academic and political debates over the minimum wage generally focus on the minimum wage rate. However, the minimum wage is a complex institution composed of a wide variety of parameters. In this note, I show that nominal rates provide a very crude picture of minimal compensation and of...

This paper analyzes the regional variation of minimum wage in China. We first introduce the institutional background of China's minimum wage policy, and then describe the regional variation of the minimum wages using detailed minimum wage data since the late 1990s. Large regional variation...

In this paper we define and estimate measures of labor market frictions using data on job durations. We compare different estimation methods and different types of data. We propose and apply an unconditional inference method that can be applied to aggregate duration data. It does not require...

In monopsony models of the labour market either a minimum wage or an employment subsidy financed by a lump sum tax on profits can achieve the efficient level of employment and output. Incorporating working conditions into a monopsony model where higher wages raise firm labour supply, but less...

With outsourcing comes a perceived tension between the competitive pressures faced by domestic firms and the effect that outsourcing has on domestic workers. To address this tension, we present a general-equilibrium model with an oligopolistic export sector and a competitive import-competing...

The time-series approach used in the minimum wage literature essentially aims to estimate a treatment effect of increasing the minimum wage. In this paper, we employ a novel approach based on aggregate time-series data that allows us to determine if minimum wage changes have significant effects...

This paper assesses the impact of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) on employment and inequality in the UK over the decade since its introduction in 1999. Identification is facilitated by using variation in the bite of the NMW across local labour markets and the different sized year on year up...

This paper sheds new light on the effects of the minimum wage on employment from a two-sided theoretical perspective, in which firms' job offer and workers' job acceptance decisions are disentangled. Minimum wages reduce job offer incentives and increase job acceptance incentives. We show that...