Please note that this event will take place exceptionally on a Thursday.

Opponents of minimum wage increases have long worried about their impact on restaurants, which often rely on low-wage workers. Dara Lee Luca and Michael Luca will present research on raising the minimum wage in cities such as San Francisco, where they find that higher wages have come with increased rates of restaurant closure. Struggling, poorly-rated restaurants are especially vulnerable when the minimum wage rises, while highly-rated restaurants see little effect.

Dara Lee Luca is a researcher at Mathematica Policy Research in Oakland, California and has taught public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She focuses on labor economics, health economics, and law.

Michael Luca is a professor at Harvard Business School. He works closely with companies and cities to help them become more data-driven, and has ongoing collaborations with Yelp, Facebook, the UK government, and the City of Boston, in addition to other partners.