A national minimum wage cannot explain variation in wages or employment across regions. Identification of the effect of the minimum wage separately from the effect of other variables on wages or employment requires regional variation. Many minimum wage variables with regional variation have been...

The international literature on minimum wage greatly lacks empirical evidence from developing countries. Brazil’s minimum wage policy is a distinctive and central feature of the Brazilian economy. Not only are increases in the minimum wage large and frequent but also the minimum wage has been...

This paper puts together evidence for the wages, employment and price effects of the minimum wage. This overall picture will help to understand the small employment effects prevalent in the literature in the light of price effects. The data used is an under-explored monthly Brazilian household...

Following the early 1980s apparent consensus, there has been a controversial debate in the literature over the direction of the minimum wage employment effect. Explanations to non-negative effects range from theoretical to empirical identification and data issues. An explanation, however, that...

The available empirical minimum wage literature, which is mostly based on US evidence, is not very useful for analyzing developing countries, where the minimum wage affects many more workers and labour institutions and law enforcement differ in important ways. The main contribution of this paper...

There is very little empirical evidence on the effects of the minimum wage on prices in the international literature and none whatsoever for developing countries. This paper estimates the minimum wage price effect using monthly Brazilian household and firm data from 1982 to 2000 aggregated at a...

The minimum wage literature is very limited on empirical evidence for developing countries. This already limited literature is even more limited on the effects of the minimum wage in the informal sector, where most of the poor are. Extending the understanding of minimum wage effects both in...

It is well established in the international literature that minimum wage increases compress the wages distribution. Firms respond to these higher labour costs by reducing employment, reducing profits, or raising prices. While there are hundreds of studies on the employment effect of the minimum...

The wage and employment effects of the minimum wage predicted by the standard neoclassical theory rely on a profit maximizing firm, not on a Government employer that can cover the higher wage bill by raising taxes, reducing expenditure, or simply printing money. If the public sector has an...