This dissertation is an empirical investigation into the distributive effects of overand under-education, defined as market outcomes such that some workers possess skills over or below those required at their jobs respectively. This type of market failure can arise in assignment and search...

Minimum wage laws have become a key political issue, following on the heels of over 130 successful living wage campaigns around the country. In the debates surrounding these mandated wage floors, one recurring issue has been whether the legislation has wider-ranging impacts on wages than the...

The paper investigates the role of the minimum wage in a competitive economy in which there is underreporting of earnings by employed labour. The minimum wage induces higher compliance by some low- productivity workers and transforms a nominally neutral fiscal system into a regressive one. A...

Poverty is a significant world wide issue. Although literature on the impact of aminimum wage in the agricultural sector is rather limited, previous empirical researchshows that employment was reduced with the implementation of a minimum wage.The following questions are studied:- Does the...

This paper compares the traditional neoclassical economic perspective with the recentempirical findings regarding minimum wage effect on employment. The comparison is done by reviewing and analyzing relevant literature and data that have recorded, over time, the changing attitudes toward the...

In the debate on the economic effects of labor market regulation much work has focused on minimum wages. A legal minimum wage remains one of the most controversial policy issues. The controversy arises for two main reasons: first, there is no consensus over the economic impacts of the minimum...

Agriculture is an essential part of life in the United States due to the fact that everyone needs to eat. And, being that many commodities within agriculture, such as apples, are very labor intensive, the people that work in the industry are also very important. But while these laborers, many of...

Subsistence theory predicts the distress sale of labor at very low wages, such that the income effect dominates not only at high wages (as is relatively established) but also below a ‘subsistence wage’. This theory has been developed and tested in the context of mainly agricultural...

Low-wage labor markets are traditionally viewed as competitive, and the possibility of strategic behavior by employers is dismissed. However, such behavior is not impossible. This paper investigates the possibility of tacit collusion by low-wage employers while setting wages. A game-theoretic...

The paper discusses the meaning and measurement of pro-poor growth and also reviews evidence of pro-poor growth (or the lack of it) in a large cross-section of countries and time periods. The emerging story is that many episodes of growth are not pro-poor and also that although economic reforms...