Recent proposals argue that a fast food tax may be an effective policy lever for reducing population weight. Although there is growing evidence for a negative association between fast food prices and weight among adolescents, less is known about adults. That any measured relationship to date is...

Recent proposals argue that a fast food tax may be an effective policy lever for reducing population weight. Although there is growing evidence for a negative association between fast food prices and weight among adolescents, less is known about adults. That any measured relationship to date is...

We investigate how changes in federal and state minimum wages affect body mass index and the probability of obesity using data from the 1990 through 2008 waves of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. After controlling for unobserved trends at the state level we find that, in contrast...

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...

Just as the standard two-way fixed effects model for estimating the impact of minimum wages on employment has been sharply criticized for its neglect of spatial heterogeneity so, too, have the latest models been attacked for their uncritical use of state- or county-specific linear trends (and...

Do apparently large minimum wage increases in an environment of straightened economic circumstances produce clearer evidence of disemployment effects than is typically reported in the new economics of the minimum wage? The present paper augments the sparse literature covering the very latest...

Recent attempts to incorporate spatial heterogeneity in minimum-wage employment models have been targeted for using overly simplistic trend controls and for neglecting the potential impact of wage minima on employment growth. This paper investigates whether such considerations call into question...