This paper investigates the effects of legal minimum wages on wages, employment, hours worked and monthly earnings among workers covered by minimum wage legislation as well as those for whom it does not apply (the uncovered sector) in Costa Rica. This country?s large uncovered sector and complex...

This paper contributes to our understanding of the impact of institutions on incomes of workers in developing countries by rigorously addressing the question as to whether changes in minimum wages can change the inequality of the distribution of earnings. More specifically, we analyze whether...

In order to offer a balanced assessment of the role of minimum wages in the Welfare State, seven basic questions need to be answered: (i) Why is the minimum wage a useful redistributive tool?; (ii) How binding are minimum wage floors in different countries?; (iii) To what extent do minimum wages...

We use a panel of manufacturing plants from Colombia to analyze how the rise in payroll tax rates over the 1980?s and 1990?s affected the labor market. Our estimates indicate that formal wages fall by between 1.4% and 2.3% as a result of a 10% rise in payroll taxes. This...

This paper provides a comprehensive portrait of the level and compliance to sectoral minimum wages in Italy between 2008 and 2015. The results show that minimum wages in Italy are relatively high both in absolute terms and relative to the median wage. However, non-compliance rates are not...

In several OECD countries employer federations and unions fix skill-specific wage floors for all workers in an industry. One view of those "explicit" contracts argues that the prevailing wage structure reflects the labor market conditions back at the time when those contracts were bargained,...

Minimum wages alter the allocation of firm-idiosyncratic risk across workers. To establish this result, we focus on Italy, and leverage employer-employee data matched to firm balance sheets and hand-collected wage floors. We find a relatively larger pass-through of firm-specific labor-demand...

Till the early-1990s the collectively-bargained labor contract (between the trade-union that presented the employees, and the employer or the employers'-association) was the norm, granting salaried workers a stable and protected labor contract. Thereafter, and more significantly after 1995, the...

Till the early-1990s the collectively-bargained labor contract (between the trade-union that presented the employees, and the employer or the employers'-association) was the norm, granting salaried workers a stable and protected labor contract. Thereafter, and more significantly after 1995, the...

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...