The national minimum wage is an important cornerstone of Government strategy aimed at providing employees with decent minimum standards and fairness in the workplace. It applies to nearly all workers and sets hourly rates below which pay must not be allowed to fall. It helps business by ensuring...

In order to address the impact of regulation on ethical concerns of consumers, westudy the e¤ect of a minimum wage. In our experimental market, consumers havemonopsony power, firms engage in Bertrand competition, and workers are passiverecipients of a wage payment. Two treatments are employed,...

The principal means by which individuals and families achieve economic self-sufficiency is through labor market earnings. As a consequence, it is natural for policy makers to look to interventions that increase the ability of individuals and families to achieve an adequate standard of living...

We show that, contrary to widespread belief, low-pay workers do not generally prefer that theminimum wage rate be increased until the labor demand is unitary elastic...

In many countries, non-compliance with minimum wage legislation is widespread, andauthorities may be seen as having turned a blind eye to a legislation that they havethemselves passed. But if enforcement is imperfect, how effective can a minimum wage be?And if non-compliance is widespread, why...

We build a theoretical model to study whether a minimum wage can be welfare-improving if itis implemented in conjunction with an optimized nonlinear income tax. We consider this issuein a framework where search frictions on the labor market generate unemployment. Workersdiffer in productivity...

We analyze optimal taxation in an economy with monopsonistic labor markets. Theindividuals, whose only decisions are whether to work, or not, have heterogeneousproductivities and opportunity costs of work. Given its preferences for redistribution, thegovernment, which does not observe the...

We review the burgeoning literature on the employment effects of minimum wages – in theUnited States and other countries – that was spurred by the new minimum wage researchbeginning in the early 1990s. Our review indicates that there is a wide range of existingestimates and, accordingly, a...

International comparisons of minimum-wage levels have largely focused on the gross valueof minimum wages, ignoring the effects of taxation on both labour costs and the net incomeof employees. This paper presents estimates of the tax burdens facing minimum-wageworkers. These are used as a basis...

Labor market studies on the effects of minimum wages are typically confinedto the sector or worker group directly affected. We present a two-sector searchmodel in which one sector is more productive than the other one and thus,pays higher wages. In such a framework, setting a minimum wage in...