Comment on David Neumark and William Wascher, "Employment Effects of Minimum and Subminimum Wages PDF Download

Author: David Edward Card
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Job vacancies
Languages : en
Pages : 28

View

Book Description

Author: David Neumark
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Minimum wage
Languages : en
Pages : 52

View

Book Description
In Neumark and Wascher (1992), we present findings supporting the earlier consensus that minimum wages reduce employment for teens and young adults, with elasticities in the range -0.1 to -0.2. In addition, we find that subminimum wages moderate these disemployment effects. Card, Katz and Krueger (1993) criticize numerous aspects of our analysis, and contest our conclusions. This reply presents an assessment of their arguments, as well as additional evidence related to some of the criticisms that they raise. We conclude that the issues raised by Card, et al., upon further examination, do not alter the conclusions from our original paper, and in some cases even reinforce those conclusions.

Author: David Neumark
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Employment (Economic theory)
Languages : en
Pages : 64

View

Book Description
We construct a panel data set on state-level minimum wage laws and economic conditions to reevaluate existing evidence on minimum wage effects on employment, most of which comes from time-series data. Our estimates of the elasticities of teen and young-adult employment-to-population ratios fall primarily in the range -0.1 to -0.2, similar to the consensus range of estimates from time-series studies. We also find evidence that youth subminimum wage provisions enacted by state legislatures have moderated the disemployment effects of minimum wages.

Author: David Neumark
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

View

Book Description

Author: David Neumark
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 23

View

Book Description

Author: David Edward Card
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Minimum wage
Languages : en
Pages : 26

View

Book Description
We re-examine recent cross-state evidence on the employment effect of the minimum wage. A re-evaluation of the data used in Neumark and Wascher's (1992) study of the minimum wage provides no support for their conclusion that the minimum wage has an adverse effect on teenage employment. Neumark and Wascher's findings are shown to be due to an inadvertent mistake in the definition of their school enrollment variable. In addition, Neumark and Wascher's coverage-weighted relative minimum wage index is shown to be negatively correlated with average teenage wages. We also re-analyze the experiences of individual states following the April 1990 increase in the Federal minimum wage, allowing for a full year lag in the effect of the law and controlling for changes in (properly measured) enrollment rates. These changes actually strengthen Card's (1992a) conclusion that the 1990 increase in the Federal minimum had no adverse employment effect. Lastly, we find that subminimum wages are rarely used, casting doubt on the claim that subminimum wage provisions temper any employment losses attributable to the minimum wage

Author: David Neumark
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780262515085
Category : Income distribution
Languages : en
Pages : 0

View

Book Description
A comprehensive review of evidence on the effect of minimum wages on employment, skills, wage and income distributions, and longer-term labor market outcomes concludes that the minimum wage is not a good policy tool. Minimum wages exist in more than one hundred countries, both industrialized and developing. The United States passed a federal minimum wage law in 1938 and has increased the minimum wage and its coverage at irregular intervals ever since; in addition, as of the beginning of 2008, thirty-two states and the District of Columbia had established a minimum wage higher than the federal level, and numerous other local jurisdictions had in place "living wage" laws. Over the years, the minimum wage has been popular with the public, controversial in the political arena, and the subject of vigorous debate among economists over its costs and benefits. In this book, David Neumark and William Wascher offer a comprehensive overview of the evidence on the economic effects of minimum wages. Synthesizing nearly two decades of their own research and reviewing other research that touches on the same questions, Neumark and Wascher discuss the effects of minimum wages on employment and hours, the acquisition of skills, the wage and income distributions, longer-term labor market outcomes, prices, and the aggregate economy. Arguing that the usual focus on employment effects is too limiting, they present a broader, empirically based inquiry that will better inform policymakers about the costs and benefits of the minimum wage. Based on their comprehensive reading of the evidence, Neumark and Wascher argue that minimum wages do not achieve the main goals set forth by their supporters. They reduce employment opportunities for less-skilled workers and tend to reduce their earnings; they are not an effective means of reducing poverty; and they appear to have adverse longer-term effects on wages and earnings, in part by reducing the acquisition of human capital. The authors argue that policymakers should instead look for other tools to raise the wages of low-skill workers and to provide poor families with an acceptable standard of living.

Author: David Neumark
Publisher: Now Publishers Inc
ISBN: 1601980124
Category : Employment (Economic theory)
Languages : en
Pages : 1

View

Book Description
"We review the burgeoning literature on the employment effects of minimum wages -- in the United States and other countries -- that was spurred by the new minimum wage research beginning in the early 1990s. Our review indicates that there is a wide range of existing estimates and, accordingly, a lack of consensus about the overall effects on low-wage employment of an increase in the minimum wage. However, the oft-stated assertion that recent research fails to support the traditional view that the minimum wage reduces the employment of low-wage workers is clearly incorrect. A sizable majority of the studies surveyed in this monograph give a relatively consistent (although not always statistically significant) indication of negative employment effects of minimum wages. In addition, among the papers we view as providing the most credible evidence, almost all point to negative employment effects, both for the United States as well as for many other countries. Two other important conclusions emerge from our review. First, we see very few -- if any -- studies that provide convincing evidence of positive employment effects of minimum wages, especially from those studies that focus on the broader groups (rather than a narrow industry) for which the competitive model predicts disemployment effects. Second, the studies that focus on the least-skilled groups provide relatively overwhelming evidence of stronger disemployment effects for these groups"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.

Author: David Neumark
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

View

Book Description
A central issue in estimating the employment effects of minimum wages is the appropriate comparison group for states (or other regions) that adopt or increase the minimum wage. In recent research, Dube et al. (2010) and Allegretto et al. (2011) argue that past U.S. research is flawed because it does not restrict comparison areas to those that are geographically proximate and fails to control for changes in low-skill labor markets that are correlated with minimum wage increases. They argue that using "local controls" establishes that higher minimum wages do not reduce employment of less-skilled workers. In Neumark et al. (2014), we present evidence that their methods fail to isolate more reliable identifying information and lead to incorrect conclusions. Moreover, for subsets of treatment groups where the identifying variation they use is supported by the data, the evidence is consistent with past findings of disemployment effects. Allegretto et al. (2013) have challenged our conclusions, continuing the debate regarding some key issues regarding choosing comparison groups for estimating minimum wage effects. We explain these issues and evaluate the evidence. In general, we find little basis for their analyses and conclusions, and argue that the best evidence still points to job loss from minimum wages for very low-skilled workers - in particular, for teens.

Author: United States. Women's Bureau
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Minimum wage
Languages : en
Pages : 12

View

Book Description