This paper sets out three simple models of firm behavior under minimum wage legislation. The key feature of these models is that they account for important aspects of the government's mechanism for monitoring and enforcing compliance with the minimum wage law. The major results of the paper are...

The principal justification for minimum wage legislation has been the claim that it would improve the economic condition of low-wage workers. Most previous analyses of the distributional effects of minimum wages have been based on simulation exercises employing restrictive assumptions that...

Do apparently large minimum wage increases in an environment of recession produce clearer evidence of disemployment effects than is typically observed in the new minimum wage literature? This paper augments the sparse literature on the most recent increases in the U.S. minimum wage, using three...

This paper examines the impact of minimum wages on earnings and employment in selected branches of the retail-trade sector, 1990-2005, using county-level data on employment and a panel regression framework that allows for county-specific trends in sectoral outcomes. We focus on particular...

We use county-level data on employment and earnings in the restaurant-and-bar sector to evaluate the impact of minimum wage changes on low-wage labor markets. Our empirical approach is similar to the literature that has used state-level panel data to estimate minimum-wage impacts, with the...

Do apparently large minimum wage increases in an environment of straightened economic circumstances produce clearer evidence of disemployment effects than is typically reported in the new economics of the minimum wage? The present paper augments the sparse literature covering the very latest...