Raising the Bar: Minimum Wages and Employers' Hiring Standards

By Sebastian Butschek

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2022

Many scholars have studied the employment effects of minimum wages, but little is known about effects on the composition of hires. I investigate whether Germany's minimum wage introduction raised hiring standards, using worker fixed effects as a proxy for...

Minimum-Wage Increases and Low-Wage Employment: Evidence from Seattle

By Ekaterina Jardim, Mark C. Long, Robert Plotnick, Emma van Inwegen, Jacob Vigdor, and Hilary Wething

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2022

Seattle raised its minimum wage to as much as $11 in 2015 and as much as $13 in 2016. We use Washington State administrative data to conduct two complementary analyses of its impact. Relative to outlying regions of the state identified by the synthetic ...

Higher pay, fewer hours

[Page]

How did increases in the minimum wage affect demand for low-wage workers in Seattle?

Sadie T. M. Alexander: Black Women and a "Taste of Freedom in the Economic World"

By Nina Banks

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2022

The employment history of African American women is notable because of their higher labor force participation rates compared to other women in the US. This essay discusses Sadie T. M. Alexander's analysis of Black women and work based on her 1930s speec...

Earnings Inequality and the Minimum Wage: Evidence from Brazil

By Niklas Engbom and Christian Moser

American Economic Review, December 2022

Increases in the minimum wage can substantially reduce earnings inequality. To demonstrate this, we combine administrative and survey data with an equilibrium model of the Brazilian labor market. We find that a 128 percent increase in the real minimum wag...

Falling wages and discretionary pay-setting practices

[Research Highlight]

February 06, 2023

A decline in the use of standardized pay rates contributed to stagnating wages from the 1970s to the mid-1990s.

The Minimum Wage as a Tool for Racial Economic Justice

By Andria Smythe and Linchi Hsu

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2023

Participants at the 1963 civil rights march on Washington supported minimum wage laws using arguments of economic justice. Many economists at the time argued against the minimum wage based on efficiency concerns rooted in neoclassical theory. After decade...

SongYi Paik on agricultural minimum wages

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How do minimum wages affect agricultural labor markets?

Employment and Earnings of Men at High Risk of Gun Violence

By Max Kapustin, Monica P. Bhatt, Sara B. Heller, Marianne Bertrand, and Christopher Blattman

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2024

Since Becker (1968), economists have modeled crime as resulting from higher returns to criminal activity than legal work. Yet contemporary employment data for people engaged in crime is scarce. We surveyed men at extreme risk of gun violence in Chicago ab...

Price Floors and Employer Preferences: Evidence from a Minimum Wage Experiment

By John J. Horton

American Economic Review, January 2025

Firms posting job openings in an online labor market were randomly assigned minimum hourly wages. When facing a minimum wage, fewer firms hired, but those they did hire paid higher wages. Hours-worked fell substantially. Treated firms shifted to hiring mo...

Consensus building and mobilization

[Research Highlight]

June 26, 2025

Myanmar's labor unions show how local leaders can shape social movements.

Leaders in Social Movements: Evidence from Unions in Myanmar

By Laura Boudreau, Rocco Macchiavello, Virginia Minni, and Mari Tanaka

American Economic Review, June 2025

Social movements are catalysts for crucial institutional changes. To succeed, they must coordinate members' views (consensus building) and actions (mobilization). We study union leaders within Myanmar's burgeoning labor movement. Union leaders are positiv...

Declining Wage Inequality in Developing Countries: The Case of Brazil

By Sergio Firpo and Alysson Portella

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2025

Despite rising inequality in rich countries, many developing economies have experienced a decline in inequality in recent decades. Brazil is a notable example. From 1995 to 2015, its Gini index decreased from 58 to 48 points. An extensive body of research...

International Trade Responses to Labor Market Regulations

By Mathilde Muñoz

American Economic Review, November 2025

This paper demonstrates that labor market regulations, such as minimum wages or payroll taxes, shape trade competition in labor-intensive activities. I exploit data from a large European trade program where firms from different countries supply labor serv...

Supply, Demand, Institutions, and Firms: A Theory of Labor Market Sorting and the Wage Distribution

By Daniel Haanwinckel

American Economic Review, December 2025

This paper examines how workforce composition, labor demand, and minimum wage jointly determine wages through their effects on worker-task assignments, firm wage premiums, and firm-worker sorting. Using an estimated model of monopsonistic local labor mark...

Across-Country Wage Compression in Multinationals

By Jonas Hjort, Xuan Li, and Heather Sarsons

American Economic Review, January 2026

Many employers link wages at establishments outside of the home region to the level at headquarters. We show this using new data on 1,200 multinationals' establishments across the world and linked employee-level data on their establishments in Brazil. Hea...

Labor Market Power: From Micro Evidence to Macro Consequences

[Symposium: Competition in Labor Markets]

By David Berger, Kyle Herkenhoff, and Simon Mongey

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2026

The traditional theoretical and empirical "micro approach" to studying labor market power (or monopsony) requires that firms are small and atomistic. This is at odds with the reality of labor markets in which monopsony potentially matters most. Empiricall...

Do Workfare Programs Live Up to Their Promises? Experimental Evidence from Côte d’Ivoire

By Marianne Bertrand, Bruno Crépon, Alicia Marguerie, and Patrick Premand

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

We study contemporaneous and post-program impacts of a public works program, which provides urban youth seven months of employment at the formal minimum wage with complementary training on entrepreneurship or job search. During the program, we find limi...