This paper offers an eclectic survey of the political economy of labor regulation in the United States at federal and state levels along the dimensions of occupational health and safety, unjust dismissal, right-to-work, workplace safety and workers’ compensation, living wages, and prevailing...

Do apparently large minimum wage increases in an environment of recession produce clearer evidence of disemployment effects than is typically observed in the new minimum wage literature? This paper augments the sparse literature on the most recent increases in the U.S. minimum wage, using three...

This paper examines the impact of minimum wages on earnings and employment in selected branches of the retail-trade sector, 1990-2005, using county-level data on employment and a panel regression framework that allows for county-specific trends in sectoral outcomes. We focus on particular...

We use county-level data on employment and earnings in the restaurant-and-bar sector to evaluate the impact of minimum wage changes on low-wage labor markets. Our empirical approach is similar to the literature that has used state-level panel data to estimate minimum-wage impacts, with the...

This paper studies the social desirability of agglomeration and the efficiency arguments for policy intervention in a simple, analytically solvable 'new economic geography' model with two trade integrating regions. The location pattern emerging as market equilibrium is bubbleshapedʺ, i.e. it...

Entrepreneurs who decide to enter an industry are faced with different levels of effective entry costs in different countries. These costs are heavily influenced by economic policy. What is not well understood is how international trade affects the government incentive to impact on entry costs,...