IRLE Minimum Wage Group Influences National, State and Local Debates

This corpus of policy briefs, reports and academic research has greatly influenced the widespread public and academic debates about the future of U.S. minimum wage policy. The national media closely follows the release of IRLE publications and is quick to seek the opinions of many of our experts.

Much of the academic minimum wage research at IRLE has been spearheaded by Center for Wage and Employment Dynamics’s (CWED) chair, Professor Michael Reich, and former CWED co-chair Dr. Sylvia Allegretto.

Other minimum wage researchers at IRLE include the Labor Center’s Ken Jacobs and Annette Bernhardt. In addition to the CWED publications listed below, the Labor Center publishes a variety of research and resources on minimum wages, including the Inventory of US City and County Minimum Wage Ordinances.

CWED Minimum Wage Publications

2018
Are Local Minimum Wages Absorbed by Price Increases? Estimates from Internet-based Restaurant Menus
and   –  Scholarly Publications

ILR Review, 71(1):35-63. January 2018.

Abstract
The authors analyze 884 Internet-based restaurant menus from inside and outside San Jose, California, which they collected before and after the city implemented a 25% minimum wage increase in 2013. Their findings suggest that nearly all of the cost increase was passed through to consumers, as prices rose 1.45% on average. Minimum wage price elasticities averaged 0.058 for all restaurants and ranged from 0.044 to 0.109, depending on the type of restaurant. The authors’ estimate of payroll cost increases net of turnover savings is consistent with these findings. Equally important, border effects for restaurants are smaller than is often conjectured. Price differences among restaurants that are one-half mile from either side of the policy border are not competed away, indicating that restaurant demand is spatially inelastic. These results imply that city-wide minimum wage policies need not result in substantive negative employment effects nor shifts of economic activity to nearby areas.
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