An Empirical Discourse Analysis on Correlations between the Minimum Wage and Domestic Private Investment

This research has an objective to empirically analyze the discourse about correlations between the minimum wage and domestic private investment, which has been criticized severely by the authorities, especially since the Pua Thai Party’s policy announcement on the guarantee of labors’ minimum wage at 300 baht per day. The research uses an advanced quantitative methodology, analyzing time-series data of the minimum wage, import of capital goods and domestic machinery sales by regression and the Johansen Cointegration Test. The regression analysis reveals that the minimum wage correlates in the same direction with both imports of capital goods and domestic machinery sales, whereas when applying the Johansen Cointegration Test, the findings surprisingly indicate that they do not possess any cointegration. This indicates that the claim that the minimum wage increase will affect the domestic private investment has been reinforced by the authorities using their superior status to dominate the process of building a body of knowledge as well as to distort the truth so as to possess a control over the society. This is thus not a good-faith mistake but an effort of discourse fights on the economic unfairness and social-class discrimination, which is the root of Thailand’s important structural problems. ภาคภาษาไทยของบทความเรื่องนี้สามารถค้นได้ที่ http://ssrn.com/abstract=1970463