The attainment of ‘fairness' is widely regarded as a worthy goal of setting minimum wages, but opinions differ sharply over how to achieve it. This paper examines how interpretations of fairness shaped the minimum wage decisions of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission between 1997...

On 3 June 2010, the Minimum Wage Panel of Fair Work Australia concluded its Annual Wage Review for 2009-10. Having considered the evidence from written submissions, public consultations and a range of internal and external research, the Panel decided to increase minimum wage rates in modern...

The present economic crisis comes against the background of decades of policy changesthat have generally weakened the capacity of social safety nets to offer citizens withadequate resources for financial survival when labour markets fail to do so. Building on datafor 24 European Union countries,...

We study the impact of tax and minimum wage reforms on the incidence of informality. Togauge the incidence of informality, we use measures of the extent of tax evasion, the extentof minimum wage non-compliance, and the size of the informal workforce. Our approachallows us to examine (i) the...

Worker-level panel data are used to analyse the separate employment effects of increases in the social security taxes paid by employers and increases in the minimum wage in Turkey between 2002 and 2005. Variation over time and among low-wage workers in the ratio of total labour costs to the...

The economic impact of the 2007-2009 increases in the federal minimum wage (MW) isanalyzed using a sample of quick-service restaurants in Georgia and Alabama. Store-levelbiweekly payroll records for individual employees are used, allowing us to precisely measurethe MW compliance cost for each...