the highs and lows of the minimum wage effect a time series cross section study of the canadian law we examine the effects of minimum wage legislation in canada over the period 1975 93 for teenagers we find that a 10 increase in the minimum wage is associated with roughly a 2 5 decrease in employment we also find that this result is driven by low frequency variation in the data at high frequencies the elasticity is positive and insignificant the difference in the elasticity across the bandwidth has implications for the interpretation of employment dynamics as a result of minimum wage policy and experimental design in minimum wage studies it also provides a simple reconciliation of the new minimum wage research which reports very small negative or positive elasticities

price pass through and the minimum wage this paper tests a textbook consequence of competitive markets that an industry wide increase in the price of labor is passed on to consumers through an increase in prices using several data sources on restaurant prices i explore the price impact of minimum wage hikes in canada and the united states particular attention is paid to the timing of these price responses to gauge the stickiness of minimum wage cost shocks i find that restaurant prices generally rise with changes in the wage bill and that this response is concentrated in the quarter surrounding the month during which the legislation is enacted

minimum wages for domestic workers impact evaluation of the indian experience abstract what impact does minimum wage legislation have on wages and employment opportunities in an informal sector in a developing country the paper answers this question in the context of minimum wage legislation for domestic workers in india over the period of 2004 2012 combining matching procedure with difference in difference estimation approach supported by extensive robustness checks the paper estimates both the short run and the long run impact of the legislation on real wages and employment results show a positive impact of the legislation on real wages in the shortrun while there is limited evidence of this effect persisting in the long run further the legislation did not seem to have any impact at the extensive margin on the probability of being employed as a domestic worker over short or long run our analysis further reveals that the wages of majority of workers remain below the minimum wage available evidence from the ground in line with theoretical predictions point towards weak enforcement of the legislation as the potential driving factor of observed results as india recently extended national level minimum wage for all workers the paper provides a cautionary tale on the potential pitfalls of implementation of this legislation in informal sector and suggests some ways to overcome the same

the school to work transition a cross national perspective school to work patterns and issues are discussed for seven economies france germany japan the netherlands sweden the united kingdom and the united states the emphasis is placed on differences across countries in the current labor market position of young people and recent trends therein along with the institutions that regulate youth education training and employment the power of public policies including labor market deregulation labor market programs vocationalization of education and apprenticeship to improve youth outcomes is discussed drawing on national evaluation literatures evidence of extensive policy failure points up the need to develop nationally appropriate institutions to improve school to work transitions

the impact of minimum wages on employment in a low income country a quasi natural experiment in indonesia the extensive literature on the employment impact of minimum wages has focused heavily on industrialized nations and very little on the developing world despite the importance of minimum wages in many low income countries one such country indo nesia was the setting for an unusual quasi natural experiment not only did minimum wages in indonesia increase sharply between 1990 and 1996 but the resultant increment in average wages varied markedly across different areas in greater jakarta the authors use household level labor market data to determine the extent of compliance with the legislation then estimate the employment impact in the clothing textiles footwear and leather industries based on a census of all large and medium sized establishments the evidence suggests that there was no negative employment impact for large establish ments either foreign or domestic but that workers in smaller domestic establishments may have suffered job losses as a result of minimum wage increases

effects of the minimum wage on the employment status of youths an update the large decline in the relative value of the minimum wage during the 1980s makes that period a valuable one for identifying the impact of variation in the minimum wage on youth employment this study produces the robust finding that when the experience of the 1980s is included a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage is estimated to reduce teen employment by less than 1 percent the lower end of the range of previous estimates because this small employment effect is offset by a labor force withdrawal effect the study finds no discernible effect on measured unemployment the study also finds no apparent effect of the minimum wage on the employment of young adults aged 20 24

children of war the long run effects of large scale physical destruction and warfare on children this paper provides causal evidence on the long term consequences of large scale physical destruction on educational attainment health status and labor market outcomes of children i exploit the plausibly exogenous region by cohort variation in the intensity of world war two wwii destruction as a unique quasi experiment i find that exposure to destruction had long lasting detrimental effects on the human capital formation health and labor market outcomes of germans who were at school age during wwii an important channel for the effect of destruction on educational attainment is the destruction of schools whereas malnutrition is partly behind the estimated impact on health

understanding the mechanisms through which an influential early childhood program boosted adult outcomes a growing literature establishes that high quality early childhood interventions targeted toward disadvantaged children have substantial impacts on later life outcomes little is known about the mechanisms producing these impacts this paper uses longitudinal data on cognitive and personality traits from an experimental evaluation of the influential perry preschool program to analyze the channels through which the program boosted both male and female participant outcomes experimentally induced changes in personality traits explain a sizable portion of adult treatment effects

rewards to academia the remuneration of vice chancellors and principals this paper models the financial remuneration to vice chancellors and principals at uk higher education institutions after describing the alternative theoretical underpinnings for the determination of pay an earnings function is estimated utilizing institutional and personal characteristics the model suggests only a partial linkage of managerial and performance related indicators to remuneration levels this suggests substantial scope for reorientation of rewards towards such indicators rather than relying on an efficiency wage this would appear particularly appropriate given the present and continued disclosure of this information together with the increased focus on performance indicators relating to teaching and research within the uk higher education sector

are workers paid their marginal products status is like coase s social costs a reciprocal phenomenon given that one person s gain in status can occur only at the expense of a loss in status for others and that workers are free to choose their coworkers it follows that the competitive wage structure within a firm must be one in which individual wage differences understate individual differences in marginal products the purpose of this paper is to examine a variety of empirical evidence that relates to this proposition about the firm s internal wage structure the paper is organized as follows section i briefly summarizes the theoretical considerations that govern competitive wage determination when status matters to people and firms are viewed as voluntary associations of workers section ii then confronts the predictions of section i by examining pay and productivity schedules for a group of sales occupations for which these schedules are relatively easily observed section ii also examines the relationship between wages and productivity for a sample of university professors an occupation in which individual productivity differences are for a variety of obvious reasons relatively more difficult to measure all of the evidence examined is consistent with the hypothesis that within firms wage rates vary substantially less than do individual productivity values section iii discusses additional observations and evidence that bear on this same hypothesis it suggests that the implicit market for status may strongly influence the ways in which firms are organized to carry out the tasks they perform section iv concludes by considering the claim that egalitarian internal wage structures arise because of equity considerations it argues that the concept of equity appears very closely linked to the concept of status and suggests a strategy for assigning monetaty value to the equity considerations that so often dominate public policy decisions

an economic approach to influence activities in organizations members of organizations spend considerable time effort and ingenuity attempting to influence decision makers such influence activities may bring benefits to the organization but they also involve real costs this essay offers an economic rationale for such influence activity as representing rational self interested behavior in the presence of informational asymmetries and an analysis of how the design of the organization s structure and policies should respond to the incentives for attempting influence it is posited that information valuable for the organization s decision making is directly available only to members of the organization who have some personal stake in the decisions these individuals may then have an incentive to try to manipulate the information they develop and provide in order to influence the resulting decisions to their benefits this can be costly both in degrading the quality of decision making and in diverting the attention and effort of the organization s members from more productive activities the organization has three different methods it can employ to discourage excessive influence activities and to encourage more directly productive uses of time and effort it can limit access to decision makers and participation in decision making it can alter its decision making criteria to favor those performing well in productive activities and it can provide direct financial incentives to encourage the desired allocation of effort it is shown that an efficiently designed organization will use such financial incentives only as a last resort instead it will always first alter its decision participation policies and decisionmaking criteria

using regional variation in wages to measure the effects of the federal minimum wage the imposition of a national minimum wage standard provides a natural experiment in which the treatment effect varies across states depending on the fraction of workers initially earning less than the new minimum the author exploits this fact to evaluate the effect of the april 1990 increase in the federal minimum wage on teenagers wages employment and school enrollment comparisons of grouped and individual state data confirm that the rise in the minimum wage increased teenagers wages there is no evidence of corresponding losses in teenage employment or changes in teenage school enrollment

a war is forever the long run effects of early exposure to world war ii on trust abstract this paper examines the long term effect of conflict on trust by using changes in places and timing of combats during world war ii we focus on the pre school period an important life stage for the formation of trust and an age where war exposure may persist throughout life we find robust evidence that individuals exposed to combats in the first six years of life display lower trust and social engagement well into adulthood in light of the well known relationship between trust and collective action our results lend credence to the theory that violent conflict inhibits well functioning government in long run

employment effects of minimum and subminimum wages panel data on state minimum wage laws using panel data on state minimum wage laws and economic conditions for the years 1973 89 the authors reevaluate existing evidence on the effects of a minimum wage on employment their estimates indicate that a 10 increase in the minimum wage causes a decline of 1 2 in employment among teenagers and a decline of 1 5 2 in employment for young adults similar to the ranges suggested by earlier time series studies the authors also find evidence that youth subminimum wage provisions enacted by state legislatures moderate the disemployment effects of minimum wages on teenagers

war and institutions new evidence from sierra leone scholars of economic development have argued that war can have adverse impacts on later economic performance war destroys physical capital and infrastructure and disrupts human capital accumulation and it may also damage institutions by creating political instability destroying the social fabric and endangering civil liberties world bank 2003 understanding war s impact on development is particularly important for sub saharan africa where two thirds of all nations suffered from armed conflict during the 1980s and 1990s the proliferation of armed conflict in the world s poorest region begs the question of what role conflict may be playing in africa s disappointing economic performance yet the net long run effects of war are ambiguous from the point of view of economic theory to the extent that war impacts are limited to the destruction of capital the neoclassical model predicts rapid economic growth postwar converging back to steady state growth several recent papers that study war impacts including in japan donald r davis and david e weinstein 2002 and vietnam miguel and gerard roland 2005 find few persistent local impacts of u s bombing with heavily bombed areas experiencing rapid recovery to prewar population and economic trends this is consistent with the neoclassical model if war s main consequence is to destroy capital war could also affect long run growth either positively or negatively by modifying the scale parameter in the neoclassical growth model for example while the world bank 2003 argues that war has adverse institutional consequences charles h tilly shows how war promoted state formation and nation building in europe historically ultimately strengthening institutions tilly 1975 we study the aftermath of the recent civil conflict in sierra leone one notable aspect of this project is the extensive household data for sierra leone on conflict experiences and on local institutions our results are complementary to the other recent studies mentioned above none of which examines institutional impacts

inherited trust and growth this paper develops a new method to uncover the causal effect of trust on economic growth by focusing on the inherited component of trust and its time variation we show that inherited trust of descendants of us immigrants is sig nificantly influenced by the country of origin and the timing of arrival of their forebears we thus use the inherited trust of descendants of us immigrants as a time varying measure of inherited trust in their country of origin this strategy allows to identify the sizeable causal impact of inherited trust on worldwide growth during the twentieth century by controlling for country fixed effects jel n11 n12 n31 n32 o47 z13

labour demand and the source of adjustment costs to examine the importance of the two sources of costs of adjusting labor demand net costs of adjusting employment and gross costs of hiring and firing the author collects new sets of short monthly time series from a medium size hospital and three manufacturing plants models with quadratic costs and with lumpy costs are developed and yield lower bounds on the fraction of adjustment costs that are gross the estimates demonstrate that both types of costs affect dynamic labor demand but that gross adjustment costs especially and the turnover that generates them deserve much more attention copyright 1995 by royal economic society

sweatshops economic analysis and exploitation as unfairness the economic and moral defense of sweatshops given by powell and zwolinski j bus ethics 107 449 472 2012 has been criticized in two recent papers coakley and kates j bus ethics 117 553 558 2013 focus on putative weaknesses in the logic of powell s and zwolinski s argument preiss bus ethics quart 24 1 55 82 2014 argues that even granting the validity of their economic argument powell s and zwolinski s defense is without force when viewed from a kantian republican viewpoint we are concerned that sweatshop critics have misinterpreted the economic literature and overstated the conclusions that follow from their ethical premises we show that the best understanding of the current economic literature supports powell s and zwolinski s conclusions about the negative effects of sweatshop wage regulation and that it is unreasonable to reject economic analysis in moral argument against sweatshops even from a kantian perspective additionally we defend the theory of exploitation as unfairness given by wertheimer exploitation 1996 and show how economic analysis can be applied to that theory to identify cases of sweatshop exploitation

industry dynamics and the minimum wage a putty clay approach we document two new findings about the industry level response to minimum wage hikes first restaurant exit and entry both rise following a hike second there is no change in employment among continuing restaurants we develop a model of industry dynamics based on putty clay technology that is consistent with these findings in the model continuing restaurants cannot change employment and thus industry level adjustment occurs gradually through exit of labor intensive restaurants and entry of capital intensive restaurants interestingly the putty clay model matches the small estimated short run disemployment effect of the minimum wage found in other studies but produces a larger long run disemployment effect

international labor economics i argue for increased reliance on non u s data and policy evaluations to understand basic labor market parameters and to predict the effects of changes in u s labor market policies foreign experiences generate exogenous shocks to labor costs that create unusual opportunities to measure impacts on labor demand foreign policies often provide more variation in the underlying parameters in systems that are often structured like their american counterparts foreign data sets are often larger and better suited to inferring behavior an empirical examination shows the effect of author s location data set and journal on the research s subsequent impact

minimum wage effects throughout the wage distribution this paper provides evidence on a wide set of margins along which labor markets can adjust in response to increases in the minimum wage including wages hours employment and ultimately labor income not surprisingly the evidence indicates that low wage workers are most strongly affected while higher wage workers are little affected workers who initially earn near the minimum wage experience wage gains nevertheless their hours and employment decline and the combined effect of these changes on earned income suggests adverse consequences on net for low wage workers

the gender salary gap in british academia this paper considers salary determination and the gender salary gap in the academic labour market utilizing a particularly detailed data set of academics from five old established universities results reveal an aggregate gender salary differential for academic staff of 15 most of this differential can however be explained by our model evidence suggests a limited opportunity for female academics to combine career and family despite the flexibility of an academic job and emphasizes the importance of mobility to the male career publication record is found to be an important determinant of salary

time series evidence of the effect of the minimum wage on youth employment and unemployment our updated estimates indicate that a 10 percent increase in the federal minimum wage or the coverage rate would reduce teenage 16 19 employment by about 1 percent which is at the lower end of the range of estimates from previous studies because of substantial labor force withdrawal the unemployment effects are practically zero these minimum wage effects differ very little by sex and there is no strong evidence that the effects vary by race the study also finds a significant albeit small unemployment impact for young adults 20 24 and examines the consequences of numerous alternative statistical and mathematical specifications of the estimating model

civil conflict and human capital accumulation the long term effects of political violence in peru this paper provides empirical evidence of the persistent effect of exposure to political violence on human capital accumulation i exploit the variation in conflict location and birth cohorts to identify the long and short term effects of the civil war on educational attainment conditional on being exposed to violence the average person accumulates 0 31 less years of education as an adult in the short term the effects are stronger than in the long run these results hold when comparing children within the same household further exposure to violence during early childhood leads to permanent losses i also explore the potential causal mechanisms

pay equality and industrial politics personnel managers often argue that equitable pay treatment manifested as wage compression is useful because it reduces disharmony among workers but it is far from obvious that a compressed salary structure is morale improving since better workers may feel disenchanted by this scheme however when workers rewards are based on relative comparisons salary compression reduces uncooperative behavior that is detrimental to the firm relative comparisons imply that some reference group must be selected the major result is that within the relevant groups some wage compression is efficient

the long run educational cost of world war ii an important component of the long run cost of a war is the loss of human capital suffered by school age children who receive less education austrian and german individuals who were 10 years old during the conflict or were more directly involved through their parents received less education than comparable individuals from nonwar countries such as switzerland and sweden we also show that these individuals experienced a sizable earnings loss some 40 years after the war which can be attributed to the educational loss caused by the conflict the implied consequences in terms of gross domestic product loss are calculated

the intergenerational transmission of risk and trust attitudes recent theories endogenize the attitude endowments of individuals assuming that they are shaped by the attitudes of parents and other role models this paper tests empirically for the relevance of three aspects of the attitude transmission process highlighted in this theoretical literature 1 transmission of attitudes from parents to children 2 an impact of prevailing attitudes in the local environment on child attitudes and 3 positive assortative mating of parents which enhances the ability of a parent to pass on his or her attitudes to the child we focus on two fundamentally important attitudes willingness to take risks and willingness to trust others we find empirical support for all three aspects providing an empirical underpinning for the literature an investigation of underlying mechanisms shows that socialization is important in the transmission process various parental characteristics and aspects of family structure are found to strengthen the socialization process with implications for modeling the socialization production function and for policies focused on affecting children s non cognitive skills the paper also provides evidence that the transmission of risk and trust attitudes affects a wide variety of child outcomes implying a potentially large total effect on children s economic situation

executive compensation and principal agent theory the empirical literature on executive compensation generally fails to specify a model of executive pay on which to base and test hypotheses regarding its determinants in contrast this paper analy

what matters most teaching or research empirical evidence on the remuneration of british academics this paper examines the impact of productivity on pay within academia drawing upon a detailed dataset of academics from five old established universities results outline the importance of publication grant receipt and teaching quality in the determination of pay a large financial penalty to time out of the profession is revealed which with productivity variables explains away the gender salary gap the relationship between teaching and research is investigated and we find some evidence in support of the hypothesis that productive researchers are successful teachers results on reservation salary suggest that the best academics are willing to stay within the profession

minimum wage laws are they overrated l minimum has been fixed in nominal terms at about 55 percent of the current average wage rising wages in the rest of the economy gradually erode the real minimum wage and eventually the process is repeated sometimes the increase in the nominal minimum is accompanied by a permanent reduction in those businesses exempted from the law proposals for a lower minimum wage for young workers or to index the minimum wage to the average wage have been debated but not adopted the minimum wage was last increased to 3 35 in 1981 since then average hourly wages have risen by 25 percent eliminating any momentum for a lower minimum wage for youth but reviving proposals for another increase in the nominal minimum economists are fascinated by the minimum wage because we have strong theoretical predictions about the direction of the effect of the minimum wage on employment and fairly widely accepted methods to estimate the size of that impact it probably didn t hurt that the earliest and later estimates lined up well with the predictions but that is not the only reason for our fascination with the topic depending on whether we include those who say they earn less than the minimum wage minimum wage workers account for 6 to 12 percent of those employed gilroy 1981 p 157 and less than 5 percent of wage and salary income the minimum wage gives economists a relatively rare opportunity to study the impact of an exogenous increase in the price of labor and thus a chance to refine our thinking

trust in large organizations several authors suggest that trust is an important determinant of cooperation between strangers in a society and therefore of performance of social institutions we argue that trust should be particularly important for the performance of large organizations in a cross section of countries evidence on government performance participation in civic and professional societies importance of large firms and the performance of social institutions more generally supports this hypothesis moreover trust is lower in countries with dominant hierarchical religions which may have deterred networks of cooperation trust hold up remarkably well on a cross section of countries this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

product market evidence on the employment effects of the minimum wage we infer the employment response to a minimum wage change by calibrating a model of employment for the restaurant industry whereas perfect competition implies that employment falls and prices rise after a minimum wage increase the monopsony model potentially implies the opposite we show that estimated price responses are consistent with the competitive model we place fairly tight bounds on the employment response with the most plausible parameter values suggesting that a 10 increase in the minimum wage lowers low skill employment by 2 4 and total restaurant employment by 1 3

timing is everything short run population impacts of immigration in us cities abstract we provide the first analysis of the short run causal impact of immigrant inflows on native populations at the local labor market level using published statistics from the american community surveys of 2000 2010 we examine how immigrant inflow shocks to a metropolitan area affect native populations we find that immigrant inflows are associated with increases in local native populations on an annual basis but that these ols estimates are generally upward biased our iv results are purged of this bias but we still find that an additional immigrant increases the low skill native population by 0 4 0 7 in the concurrent period to explain this result we show that immigrant inflows lead to declines in outflows of low skill natives from affected msas this is most pronounced in msas from which relocation is arguably more costly which may disproportionately affect the low skilled we find short run responses among high skill natives that are consistent with displacement the decline in high skilled native populations is driven by high skilled immigrant inflows and high skilled outflows increase from affected msas we show that these short run changes are obscured in specifications using longer run population changes and conclude that the short run impact of immigrants on native populations differs markedly from their longer run impact

the effect of the minimum wage on the fast food industry using a longitudinal survey of fast food restaurants in texas the authors examine the impact of recent increases in the federal minimum wage on a low wage labor market less than 5 of fast food restaurants were using the new youth subminimum wage in july august 1991 even though the vast majority paid a starting wage below the new hourly minimum wage immediately before it became effective although some restaurants increased wages beyond the level needed to comply with higher minimum wages in both 1990 and 1991 those federal minimum wage increases greatly compressed the distribution of starting wages in the texas fast food industry two findings at variance with conventional predictions are that 1 employment increased more in those firms likely to have been most affected by the 1991 minimum wage increase than in other firms and 2 price changes were unrelated to mandated wage changes

the recognition and reward of employee performance this paper examines when and to what extent an individual s relative wage depends on his her productivity relative to others doing the same job starting wages were influenced by background characteristics and training cost realizations but not by relative productivity wages one year later were influenced by productivity but the effects were small the wage elasticity was 2 at small establishments and 0 at establishments with over 400 employees the wage response to relative productivity and training costs was weaker in small labor markets suggesting that wages do not fully respond to performance because of the firm specificity of job performance differentials

war and local collective action in sierra leone abstract we study the brutal 1991 2002 sierra leone civil war using nationally representative household data on conflict experiences postwar economic outcomes local politics and collective action individuals whose households directly experienced more intense war violence are robustly more likely to attend community meetings more likely to join local political and community groups and more likely to vote tests using prewar controls and alternative samples suggest that selection into victimization is unlikely to be driving the results more speculatively the findings could help partially explain the rapid postwar political and economic recoveries observed in sierra leone and after several other recent african civil wars

the effects of minimum wages on the distribution of family incomes a nonparametric analysis an oft stated goal of the minimum wage is to raise incomes of poor or low income families we present nonparametric estimates of the effects of minimum wages on the distribution of family income relative to needs in the united states although minimum wages increase the incomes of some poor families the evidence indicates that their overall net effect is if anything to increase the proportions of families with incomes below or near the poverty line it would appear that reductions in the proportions of families that are poor or near poor should not be counted among the potential benefits of minimum wages

do minimum wages fight poverty i introduction one of the most compelling rationales for a national minimum wage floor is to raise the incomes of poor or near poor families with members in the workforce this general point however is often missed in the debates over the merits of a higher minimum wage in contrast to these oft stated distributional goals much of the focus in such debates has been on the employment effects of minimum wages especially among the teenage population in large part this focus is probably attributable to the extensive body of economic research on the effects of minimum wages on employment of low skilled workers however although negative employment effects represent a cost of minimum wages such costs do not necessarily imply that minimum wages constitute bad social policy in particular the employment losses associated with a higher minimum wage may be more than offset by positive effects on low income families especially if minimum wages are a significant factor in helping move families out of poverty 1 this is not to argue that research on employment effects of minimum wages is irrelevant but such research may be more important as a test of the theory of labor demand and as a method of learning how employers and individuals adjust to exogenous wage increases than as a method of assessing the wisdom of the policy in addition we do not mean to suggest that the short run effects of minimum wages on the incomes of poor families should be the sole criterion for evaluating such policies other studies have found evidence suggesting for example that minimum wage increases reduce school enrollment rates and training neumark and wascher 1996a hashimoto 1982 factors that may affect longer run earnings or earnings growth these deleterious longer run effects might offset the benefits of shorter run effects of minimum wages on family incomes nonetheless our perception is that potential increases in the incomes of poor families provide the main motivation for raising the minimum wage making it important to assess the evidence on whether minimum wage increases achieve this goal in this regard there are two questions that pertain to the influence of minimum wages on family incomes generally and on poverty in particular first there is the question of the effects of minimum wages on low wage workers that is do the wage gains received by employed workers more than offset the lost earnings suffered by those who lose or cannot find jobs 2 second there is the question of how minimum wages affect workers in different parts of the family income distribution because many roughly speaking a large minority of minimum wage workers are in relatively affluent families gramlich 1976 card and krueger 1995 burkhauser et al 1996 which workers gain and which lose will have an important influence on the effects of minimum wages on the distribution of family incomes in this article we present evidence on the effects of minimum wages on family incomes focusing in particular but not solely on the effectiveness of minimum wages in reducing poverty using matched march current population surveys cpss we estimate the effects of minimum wages on the probabilities of various transitions in the family income distribution such as transitions into and out of poverty given that federal changes in minimum wages may be confounded with other aggregate level shocks influencing family income we rely heavily on state level changes in minimum wages to identify minimum wage effects in a nutshell our empirical strategy is to compare rates of transition through the family income distribution in states in which minimum wages do and do not increase for example if poor families are more likely to escape from poverty when minimum wages increase in their states of residence we would infer that minimum wage hikes help families move out of poverty on the other hand if transitions in to poverty are more common when minimum wages increase we would infer that the disemployment effects of minimum wages play a dominant role among the low income population

minimum wages and poverty in a developing country simulations from indonesia s household survey summary this study focuses on minimum wages income distribution and poverty taking indonesia as a case study a simulation approach assesses who benefits and who pays for minimum wage increases among the poor a minimum wages increase boosts net incomes for 21 of the households while it results in net losses to 79 of the households the impact is slightly less severe when there are job losses although minimum wage increases are mildly progressive the non poor pay a higher share of the costs they are unlikely to be an effective antipoverty instrument in developing countries like indonesia

interactive vs non interactive knowledge production by faculty members in this article we develop a model of individual choice to study the determinants of faculty members allocation of effort between interactive and noninteractive activities this model is tested by using censored and discrete choice econometric models to estimate optimum effort allocated to interactive activities and real interaction we conclude first that individual responds to nonmonetary rather than monetary incentives and to the difficulty of producing noninteractive rather than interactive knowledge second we detect the possible existence of rationing since optimum effort and real interaction depend on different variables

the international experience of minimum wages in an economic downturn what should governments do with the level of the minimum wage mw in times of recession in an economic downturn when most workers face falling real wages is it appropriate to let the mw fall or are the positive effects of the mw on inequality enough to justify its uprating and if so what might be the consequences on a country s employment level this paper reports new estimates of the employment effects of the mw by focusing on the recessionary experiences across countries using international data we exploit cross national variation in the level and timing of the mw uprating and the exact timing of the recessionary experiences in different countries with a panel data set comprising 33 oecd over the period 1971 2009 our panel data allow us to differentiate the effect of mws on employment in periods of economic downturn as well as periods of economic growth we also account for institutional and other policy related differences that might have an impact on employment other than the mw we find that the answer depends on whether one considers adults or young people and to some extent on what measure of the mw is considered the answer is also somewhat sensitive to whether one considers that the mw level is a choice option of the government which is inextricably interrelated to the determination of employment that is the extent to which the mw is endogenous using a political complexion of the government instrumental variable iv we find that the mw only has a negative impact on youth employment this leaves each government with the dilemma of raising the mw and reducing inequality or increasing the mw and accepting that this will reduce employment levels amongst young people and those on the margins of work peter dolton and chiara rosazza bondibene

the responsiveness of industry wages to low frequency shocks in canada the first objective of this paper is to examine the empirical relationship between low frequency shocks to labour demand and average wages on an industrial basis using a canadian longitudinal data set we estimate a fixed effects model that controls for workers unobservable attributes the second major objective is to extend the existing industry based literature by estimating a specification allowing for a comparison between the degree of wage responsiveness of within firm stayers and between firm movers the findings indicate that average wages by industry tend to respond positively to low frequency changes in employment and that there is some degree of wage flexibility within firm worker matches jel classification j3 j62 la reponse des salaires industriels a des chocs peu frequents au canada le premier objectif de ce memoire est d examiner la relation empirique entre des chocs peu frequents dans la demande de travail et les salaires moyens au niveau de l industrie a l aide d une base de donnees longitudinales pour le canada on calibre un modele a effets fixes qui tient compte des attributs non observables de travailleurs le second objectif est d enrichir la litterature au niveau de l industrie en calibrant une specification du modele qui permet une comparaison entre le degre de reaction des salaires pour ceux qui restent dans leur entreprise et ceux qui se deplacent entre entreprises les resultats indiquent que les salaires moyens par industrie tendent a repondre positivement a des changements peu frequents dans l emploi et qu il y a un certain degre de flexibilite des salaires pour les travailleurs

corporate performance and managerial remuneration an empirical analysis abstract economic theories of efficient compensation predict a positive relationship between executive pay and corporate performance and yet efforts to document this relationship have been largely unsuccessful in this paper we argue that previous cross sectional studies have omitted important variables which seriously bias their results using data that focus on individual executives over time we find that executive compensation is strongly positively related to corporate performance as measured by shareholder return and growth in firm sales the results are robust to the stock market performance measure utilized

the effect of minimum wages on immigrants employment and earnings this study examines how minimum wage laws affect the employment and earnings of low skilled immigrants and natives in the u s minimum wage increases might have larger effects among low skilled immigrants than among natives because on average immigrants earn less than natives due to lower levels of education limited english skills and less social capital results based on data from the current population survey for the years 1994 2005 do not indicate that minimum wages have adverse employment effects among adult immigrants or natives who did not complete high school however low skilled immigrants may have been discouraged from settling in states that set wage floors substantially above the federal minimum jel classifications j23 j38 j15

do minimum wages affect non wage job attributes evidence on fringe benefits although many studies have tested neoclassical labor market theory s prediction that employers will react to binding minimum wages by reducing employment levels much less empirical research has explored the possibility that employers also respond to minimum wages by adjusting non wage components of the job such as fringe benefits job safety and access to training using current population survey data for 1979 2000 this study investigates the effect of minimum wage legislation on the provision of employer health insurance and employer pension coverage the authors examine effects of state and federal variation in minimum wages on groups likely to be affected by the minimum wage and compare these effects to estimates found for groups unlikely to be affected whether the analysis uses only state level variation or federal and state variation in minimum wages the results indicate no discernible effect of the minimum wage on fringe benefit generosity for low skill workers

the food stamp program in an era of welfare reform discussion tion second the program s broad availability together with the fact that it provides food rather than cash makes it less politically contentious than other programs in my opinion however the universal availability of food stamps should make us even more interested in understanding how they work with the personal responsibility and work opportunity reconciliation act s prwora s tightening of eligibility restrictions and the end of entitlement to other welfare programs food stamps may become a more important source of aid for many families the papers presented in this session are among the first to investigate the dynamics of the food stamp program in the context of welfare reform each of these papers is thought provoking as a discussant my job is to highlight the most important aspects of the papers and provide some suggestions for their improvement let me begin with the paper by figlio gundersen and ziliak the purpose of this paper is to ascertain the extent to which the recent decline in the food stamp caseload can be attributed to state adoption of welfare waivers versus economic expansion estimates of the relationship between welfare waivers and caseload size give us a sense of what prwora s effect on the number of fam

are the effects of minimum wage increases always small new evidence from a case study of new york state the authors estimate the effect of the 2004 6 new york state nys minimum wage increase from 5 15 to 6 75 per hour on the employment rates of 16 to 29 year olds who do not have a high school diploma using data drawn from the 2004 and 2006 current population survey they employ difference in difference estimates to show that the nys minimum wage increase is associated with a 20 2 to 21 8 reduction in the employment of less skilled less educated workers with the largest effects on those aged 16 to 24 their estimates imply a median employment elasticity with respect to the minimum wage of around 0 7 large relative to previous researchers estimates the authors findings are robust to their choice of geographically proximate comparison states the use of a more highly skilled within state comparison group and a synthetic control design approach moreover their results provide plausible evidence that state minimum wage increases can have substantial adverse labor demand effects for low skilled i

seniority and monopsony in the academic labor market workers with high seniority usually have higher wages than workers with low seniority and the same total labor marke t experience in contrast the results of this paper indicate that higher seniority is associated with lower salaries for university professors the author documents this finding for national surveys a nd individual institutions and explains it as due to monopsonistic discrimination by employers copyright 1993 by american economic association

minimum wage impacts on youth employment transitions 1993 1999 abstract the longitudinal nature of the master file of the survey of labour and income dynamics slid for the period 1993 9 enables comparing transitions from employment to non employment for individuals affected by minimum wage changes with appropriate comparison groups not affected by minimum wages this is based on the large number 24 of minimum wage changes that have occurred across the different provincial jurisdictions in canada over the 1990s the results indicate that the minimum wage increases have increased the transition from employment to non employment of employed low wage youths who are at risk of being affected by a minimum wage increase by around 6 percentage points ranging from 4 to 8 percentage points these disemployment effects in turn imply minimum wage elasticities of about 0 4 ranging from 0 3 to 0 5

the employment effect in retail trade of california s 1988 minimum wage increase in this article we study the labor market effect of california s 1988 minimum wage increase in the retail trade industry two different approaches to evaluating the minimum wage effects suggest that the textbook economic analysis of minimum wages pertains employment growth in california s low wage retail trade sector appears to have been tempered by the minimum wage increase

the impact of minimum wages on labour market transitions we investigate dierences in labour market transition rates in high versus low minimum wage regimes using canadian data spanning 1979 to 2008 the data include consistent questions on job tenure and reason for job separation for the whole period over the same time frame there were over 140 minimum wage changes in canada we nd that higher minimum wages are associated with lower hiring rates but also with lower job separation rates importantly the reduced separation rates are due mainly to reductions in layos occur in the rst 6 months of a job and are present for unskilled workers of all ages our estimates imply that a 10 increase in the minimum wage generates a 3 9 reduction in the layo rate we present a search and matching model that ts with these patterns and test its implications overall our results imply

who benefits from a minimum wage increase this paper addresses the question of how a minimum wage increase affects the wages of low wage workers most studies assume that there is a simple mechanical increase in the wage for workers earning a wage between the old and the new minimum wage with some studies allowing for spillovers to workers with wages just above this range rather than assume that the wages of these workers would have remained constant this paper estimates how a minimum wage increase impacts a low wage worker s wage relative to the wage the worker would have if there had been no minimum wage increase the method allows for the effect to depend not only on the initial wage of the worker but also nonlinearly on the size of the minimum wage increase using current population survey data from 2005 to 2008 a period with a large number of u s state level minimum wage increases this paper finds that low wage workers who experience a small increase in the minimum wage tend to have lower wage growth than if there had been no minimum wage increase a large increase to the minimum wage increases the wages of not only those workers who previously earned less than the new minimum wage but also spill over to workers with moderately higher wages finally this paper finds little evidence of heterogeneity in the effect by age gender income and race

war and stature growing up during the nigerian civil war the nigerian civil war of 1967 70 was precipitated by secession of the igbo dominated south eastern region to create the state of biafra it was the first civil war in africa the predecessor of many we investigate the legacies of this war four decades later using variation across ethnicity and cohort we identify significant long run impacts on human health capital individuals exposed to the war at all ages between birth and adolescence exhibit reduced adult stature and these impacts are largest in adolescence adult stature is portentous of reduced life expectancy and lower earnings

trust and taxpaying testing the heuristic approach to collective action theory trust is a critical attitude that extends the duty heuristic developed in scholz and pinney 1995 the trust heuristic can provide the basis for a contingent compliance strategy capable of sustaining cooperative solutions to collective action problems of governance if two conditions are met first compliance with laws must be conditional on levels of trust in specific legal arenas second a citizen s trust in government and trust in other citizens willingness to obey the law must reflect the costs and benefits associated with obeying laws hypothesis this article tests the first hypothesis in the tax arena trust in government and in other citizens increase compliance over and above the levels expected from an internalized sense of duty to obey laws and the fear of getting caught by enforcement agencies like the irs method we test the hypotheses with regression analysis of survey and tax return data from a stratified sample of 299 middleand upper income taxpayers using the newlydeveloped two stage conditional maximum likelihood analysis to control for endogeneity we extend this approach to the analysis of multi categorical ordered dependent variables findings both dimensions of trust significantly increase the likelihood of tax compliance even after controlling for duty fear selection bias and potential endogeneity effects