2016
Credible research designs for minimum wage studies
Minimum Wage Shocks, Employment Flows and Labor Market Frictions
Data and Methods for Estimating the Impact of Proposed Local Minimum Wage Laws
The Effects of a $15 Minimum Wage by 2019 in San Jose and Santa Clara County
California’s Labor Market: Eight Years Post-Great-Recession
The Effects of a $15 Minimum Wage in New York State
Journal of Labor Economics, 34(3):663-704. April 2016.
- Abstract
- We provide the first estimates of the effects of minimum wages on employment flows in the US labor market, identifying the impact by using policy discontinuities at state borders. We find that minimum wages have a sizable negative effect on employment flows but not on stocks. Separations and accessions fall among affected workers, especially those with low tenure. We do not find changes in the duration of nonemployment for separations or hires. This evidence is consistent with search models with endogenous separations.
2015
Tipped Wage Effects on Earnings and Employment in Full-Service Restaurants
The Effects of Minimum Wages on Food Stamp Enrollment and Expenditures
Credible Research Designs for Minimum Wage Studies: A Response to Neumark, Salas and Wascher
Contra Costa County’s Proposed Minimum Wage Law: A Prospective Impact Study
Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, 54(4):622–647. October 2015.
- Abstract
- We exploit more than 20 years of changes in state-level tipped wage policy and estimate earnings and employment effects of the tipped wage using county-level panel data on full-service restaurants (FSR). We extend earlier work by Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010) and compare outcomes between contiguous counties that straddle a state border. We find a 10-percent increase in the tipped wage increases earnings in FSRs about 0.4 percent. Employment elasticities are sensitive to the inclusion of controls for unobserved spatial heterogeneity. In our preferred models, we find small, insignificant effects of the tipped wage on FSR employment.