2011
An Oversight Hearing on the State’s Role in Addressing Income and Wealth Inequality
The Wrong Target: Public Sector Unions and State Budget Deficits
Unemployment Benefits Critical to Jobless Workers and Economic Recovery in California
The State of Working America’s Wealth, 2011: Through volatility and turmoil, the gap widens
Does “Right-to-Work” Create Jobs? Answers from Oklahoma
What’s Wrong with ‘Right-to-Work’: Chamber’s Numbers Don’t Add Up
Waiting for Change: The $2.13 Federal Subminimum Wage
2010
Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders: Estimates Using Contiguous Counties
Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders: Estimates Using Contiguous Counties
The Great Recession, Jobless Recoveries and Black Workers
Review of Economics and Statistics, 92(4):945-964. November, 2010.
- Abstract
- We use policy discontinuities at state borders to identify the effects of minimum wages on earnings and employment in restaurants and other low-wage sectors. Our approach generalizes the case study method by considering all local differences in minimum wage policies between 1990 and 2006. We compare all contiguous county pairs in the United States that straddle a state border and find no adverse employment effects. We show that traditional approaches that do not account for local economic conditions tend to produce spurious negative effects due to spatial heterogeneities in employment trends that are unrelated to minimum wage policies. Our findings are robust to allowing for long-term effects of minimum wage changes.