This paper takes a historical perspective and assesses the evolution of the institutional features in setting the minimum wage in Greece between 1975 and 2023. It also evaluates developments regarding the minimum wage level, its bite and alignment with productivity. The paper reviews the limited...

The introduction of a statutory minimum wage in Germany in 2015 aimed at improving the welfare of low-wage workers but was also accompanied by concerns about distortions in Europe's largest economy. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of results from the evaluation of the German minimum...

This article examines the effects of the introduction of the statutory minimum wage on the distribution of individual income from wages, as well as gross and net means-weighted income of workers in Germany. For the first time, data from the Survey of Income and Consumption was used, in which...

This study examines the short-term effects of the introduction of a statutory minimum wage in Germany on hourly wages, monthly wages and paid working hours. We exploit a novel panel dataset by linking the Structure of Earnings Survey (SES) 2014 and the Earnings Survey (ES) 2015 and apply a...

Ireland is the only country in Europe with a direct question in its Labour Force Survey to identify minimum wage employees. By combining this with the longitudinal component of the Labour Force Survey, we examine the labour market transitions of minimum wage employees over a period of up to five...

While FTA negotiations are proliferating, our paper shows that targeting the appropriate sector is crucial for generating employment opportunities subsequent to FTA. In particular, we show that, countering conventional wisdom, targeting skill-biased exports and not the sector that employs...

In a union of states with partial mobility of households and firms we analyze the setting of minimum wages against the background of unemployment insurance. We find that unemployment insurance is always efficiently organized by decentral decisions. In contrast, for symmetric states only the...

The aim of this study is to investigate the role of government interventions in lowering income inequality in post-communist economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The focus is set on three key policy instruments: progressive income taxation, social transfers, and minimum wage...

Labor economics often assumes that wages w are equal to the marginal revenue product of labor MRP L. However, recent literature has shown that firms' market power allows them to pay wages substantially below marginal productivity. The markdown (MRP L - w)/w is our preferred measure of firms'...

This paper uses cross-country macroeconomic empirical evidence among OECD countries to examine possible non-linear effects on employment of raising the minimum wage, in particular that marginal disemployment effects become larger when the initial minimum wage is already high. Some evidence is...

This paper examines the role of positive income shocks in helping workers adapt to extreme temperatures. We use daily temperature variations alongside the exogenous implementation of a wage and fiscal policy in Mexican municipalities along the US border to show that increased disposable income...

We present the first empirical evidence on the 22 percent increase in the German minimum wage, implemented in 2022, raising it from € 9.82 to € 10.45 in July and to € 12 in October. Leveraging the German Earnings Survey, a large and novel data source comprising around 8 million...

We investigate the long-term effects of the introduction of the German minimum wage in 2015 and its subsequent increases on regional employment. Using comprehensive survey data, we are able to measure the regional bite of the minimum wage in 2014, just before its introduction, as well as in...

This paper explores how a minimum wage affects a firm's behavior with a competitive labor market and an uncertain export cost. The model provides several novel insights which are consistent with recent empirical evidence. Thus, a minimum wage increases an exporter's foreign-market size and may...

This paper explores how a minimum wage affects a firm's behavior with a competitive labor market and an uncertain export cost. The model provides several novel insights which are consistent with recent empirical evidence. Thus, a minimum wage increases an exporter's foreign-market size and may...

This paper investigates how labor-market tightness affects market outcomes if firms use informal, self-enforcing, agreements to motivate workers. We characterize profit-maximizing equilibria and show that an increase in the supply of homogenous workers can increase wages. Moreover, even though...

This study investigates whether the minimum wage affects the uptake of Supplemental Security Income (SSI). To disentangle the effect of the minimum wage from underlying macroeconomic conditions, I use a triple-differences-type model that exploits cross-state and temporal differences in the...

There is substantial evidence of minimum wage noncompliance in the US and the UK. In this paper, I compile new, comprehensive data on the costs minimum wage violators incur when detected. In both countries, the costs violators face upon detection are often little more than the money they saved...

This paper uses administrative employer-employee data to uncover the effects of a large payroll tax reduction for minimum-wage workers in France. Exploiting the change in labor costs both at the job level and at the firm level, I find that the policy spurred an additional 13 percentage points...

In 2015, Germany introduced a national minimum wage. While the literature agrees on at most limited negative effects on the overall employment level, we go into detail and analyze the impact on the working hours dimension and on the subset of minijobs. Using data from the German Structure of...

This paper estimates the contemporaneous effects of the real minimum wage on wage, labor income, total compensation, overtime income, working hours, and disemployment using individual-level panel data, created from the matched-outgoing rotation group (matched-ORG) of the Labor Force Survey of...

We examine whether the effects of the introduction of a minimum wage on low-pay employment duration in Germany in 2015 are heterogeneous by gender. In order to disentangle the effects on women and men, we estimate a duration model with unobserved heterogeneity in which we allow gender...

We study the productivity effect of the German national minimum wage combining administrative firm datasets. We analyze firm- and market-level effects, considering output price changes, factor substitution, firm entry and exit, labor reallocation, and short- versus long-run effects. We document...

Using full count U.S. census data, we study the impact of early 20th-century state-industry-specific minimum wage laws that primarily targeted female employees. Our triple-difference estimates suggest a null impact of the minimum wage laws, potentially reflecting disemployment effects and the...

This study investigates the impacts of the minimum wage on U.S. regional labor markets. Using ten years of county-level data, we examine the relationship between the minimum wage and several key components of the labor market. Following past research, the number of people in the labor force is...

Numerous researchers acknowledge that the occupational pension protects employees. However, in China, the total cost of occupational pensions is shared between employees and employers, representing a significant financial commitment. This study aimed to explore the effect of the occupational...

The minimum wage has become a standard measure in the economic and social policies of countries all over the world. The primary objective of this measure is to guarantee that workers receive a minimum wage that allows them to lead a decent life, thereby reducing inequality and poverty. However,...

Economists increasingly refer to monopsony power to reconcile the absence of negative employment effects of minimum wages with theory. However, systematic evidence for the monopsony argument is scarce. In this paper, I perform a comprehensive test of this argument by using labor market...

This study investigates the relationship between minimum wage policies and educational choices, specifically the decision between vocational and general school enrollment. While higher minimum wages often attract students to vocational education as a faster route to employment, our analysis of...

We investigate the long-term effects of the introduction of the German minimum wage in 2015 and its subsequent increases on regional employment. Using comprehensive survey data, we are able to measure the regional bite of the minimum wage in 2014, just before its introduction, as well as in...

This paper sets up a two-country model of offshoring with monopolistically competitive product and monopsonistically competitive labour markets. In our model, an incentive for offshoring exists even between symmetric countries, because shifting part of the production abroad reduces local labour...

This paper explores two policy interventions in Zambia, a minimum wage hike in 2018 and an upward revision in the first kink in the progressive income tax schedule in 2017, to examine and compare the impact of minimum wage and tax kink changes on wages and the earnings distribution in the formal...