In the conventional textbook demand-supply model of competitive labour markets, introduction of a minimum wage above the market-clearing level must reduce employment. Empirical findings suggest, however, that this might not always be the case, which appears to be most readily explained by...

Built upon data from 11 subsequent waves of yearly wage surveys carried out by the National Labour Center in Hungary from 1992 to 2003, the paper examines, with the use of elementary statistical tools, whether or not earnings fluctuations differed in size among groups of employees with different...