We analyze the redistributional (dis)advantages of a minimum wage over income taxation in competitive labor markets, without imposing assumptions on the (in)efficiency of labor rationing. Compared to a distributionally equivalent tax change, a minimum-wage increase raises involuntary...

We analyze the redistributive (dis)advantages of a minimum wage over income taxation in competitive labor markets. A minimum wage causes more unemployment, but also leads to more skill formation as unemployment is concentrated on low-skilled workers. A simple condition based on three sufficient...

This paper studies the employment and reallocation effects of minimum wages in Germany in a search-and-matching model with endogenous job search effort and vacancy posting, multiple employment levels, a progressive tax-transfer system, and worker and firm heterogeneity. I find that minimum wages...

We analyze the impact of the UK national minimum wage (NMW) on the employment of young workers. The previous literature found little evidence of an adverse impact of the NMW on the UK labor market. We focus on the age-related increases in the NMW at 18 and 22 years of age. Using regression...

This paper studies the price and employment response of firms to the introduction of a nation-wide minimum wage in Germany. In line with previous studies, the estimated employment effect is only modestly negative and statistically insignificant. In contrast, affected firms increased prices much...

This research documents changes in employment and wages in the Netherlands for different types of workers. We compare 2017 to 2023 using regression-adjusted wages to make sure changes in composition of the workforce do not influence our estimates. The research period has been characterised by...

We structurally estimate an equilibrium search model using German administrative data and use this for counterfactual analyses of a uniform minimum wage. The model with worker and firm heterogeneity does not restrict the sign of employment effects a priori and allows for different job offer...

This paper theoretically investigates how labor-market tightness affects market outcomes if firms use informal and self-enforcing agreements to motivate workers. We characterize profit-maximizing equilibria and derive the following results. First, an increase in the supply of homogenous workers...

In this paper we investigate the recent fall in unemployment, and the rise in part-time work and labour market participation amongst prime-aged Germans. We show that unemployment fell because the Hartz reforms induced a large fraction of the long-term unemployed to deregister as jobseekers....

We investigate minimum wage spillovers by exploiting the first-time introduction of a minimum wage within a quasi-experiment in a context with an extraordinary large bite: the German roofing industry. We find positive wage spillovers for medium-skilled workers with wages just above the minimum...