Drawing on data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), David Neumark (2002) finds that living wage laws have brought substantial wage increases for a high proportion of workers in cities that have passed these laws. He also finds that living wage laws significantly reduce employment...

The term "living wage" has been used in two separate ways: 1) a wage rate that will enable workers and their families to live above a reasonable poverty threshold; and 2) a somewhat more ambitious standard, a wage rate that will meet a family's basic budgetary needs. This paper attempts to...

This paper provides some empirical evidence on issues raised by the global anti-sweatshop movement. We first consider the relationship between wage and employment growth, finding no consistent trade-off between them. We then measure the share of labor costs in the production of garments in the...

In February 2002, New Orleans endorsed with a 63 percent majority a ballot initiative to establish a citywide minimum wage one dollar above the federal minimum. We surveyed New Orleans businesses in 1999 to estimate this proposal's costs. We present the main results from this survey. We then...