The international literature on minimum wage greatly lacks empirical evidence from developing countries. In Brazil, not only are increases in the minimum wage large and frequent but also the minimum wage has been used as anti-inflation policy in addition to its social role. This paper estimates...

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...

The international literature on minimum wage strongly lacks empirical evidence from developing countries. In Brazil, not only are increases in the minimum wage large and frequent - unlike the typically small increases focused upon in most of the existing literature - but also the minimum wage...

This paper presents new evidence on the effects of the minimum wage using Brazilian monthly household and firm panel data between 1982 and 2000. By examining the effects on wages, employment and prices together we are able to provide an explanation for the small employment effects prevalent in...

It is well established in the literature that minimum wage increases compress the wage 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 wage, there are...

Several minimum wage variables have been suggested in the literature. Such a variety of variables makes it difficult to compare the associated estimates across studies. One problem is that these estimates are not always calibrated to represent the effect of a 10% increase in the minimum wage....

With small employment responses becoming prevalent in the literature, the minimum wage is just a program that transfers money from one group to another. If the poor are the consumers of minimum wage labour intensive goods, or if these goods represent a large proportion of their consumption...

A number of recent empirical studies have found no evidence that the minimum wage adversely affects employment. Explanations for such non-negative estimates include new theoretical approaches, empirical identification and data issues. In this paper we examine the robustness of such estimates to...

There is little empirical evidence on the effect of minimum wage increases on prices, particularly for developing countries. This paper provides estimates of this effect using monthly Brazilian household and firm data over 18 years. As minimum wage increases in Brazil sare large and frequent,...