We estimate the employment effects of changes in national minimum wages using a pooled crosssection time-series data set comprising 17 OECD countries for the period 1975-2000, focusing on the impact of cross-country differences in minimum wage systems and in other labor market institutions and policies that may either offset or amplify the effects of minimum wages. The average minimum wage effe...

Despite an emerging literature, there is still sparse and mixed evidence on the wider societal benefits of Minimum Wage policies, including their effects on mental health. Furthermore, causal evidence on the relationship between earnings and mental health is limited. We focus on low-wage earners, who are at higher risk of psychological distress, and exploit the quasi-experiment provided by the ...

Bargained Wages, Wage Drift and the Design of the Wage Setting System This paper aims at answering the question: How does a typically 'European' bargaining system with collective bargaining, extension mechanisms and national minimum wage coexist with low unemployment rate and high wage flexibility? A unique data set on workers, firms and collective bargaining contracts in the Portuguese economy...

We develop an efficiency wages model, to study the effects of the imposition of a higher minimum wage on employment of heterogeneous workers, when employers use the wage and monitoring intensity to induce motivation. It is shown that when effort is adjusted to exogenous shocks then the wage and supervision, and employment and supervision can be either strategic complements or strategic substitu...

How does the minimum wage affect crime rates? Empirical research suggests that increasing a worker’s wage can deter him from committing crimes. On the other hand, if that worker becomes displaced as a result of the minimum wage, he may be more likely to commit a crime. In this paper, I describe a frictional world in which a worker’s criminal actions are linked to his labor market outcomes. The ...

Does increasing incomes improve health? In 1999, the UK government implemented minimum wage legislation, increasing hourly wages to at least £3.60. This policy experiment created intervention and control groups that can be used to assess the effects of increasing wages on health. Longitudinal data were taken from the British Household Panel Survey. We compared the health effects of higher wages...

This paper examines how closely the minimum wage has been set to the most popularly stated goals of minimum-wage policy. I first estimate these goals: the minimum-wage rate at which the relevant labor demand is unitary elastic—maximizing the total earnings of minimum-wage workers (about $5.35)—and the level that would lift a typical minimum-wage worker’s family out of poverty (about $5.17). I c...