Minimum Wage

Essays, Op-eds, and Blog Posts:

• “Impacts of Minimum Wages: Review of International Evidence” – Report prepared for Her Majesty’s Treasury (UK), 2019.

• “Making a Case for a Higher Minimum Wage” – Essay in The Milken Review, 2019.

• Minimum wages and the distribution of family incomes in the United States [WCEG Research Brief] April 2017

• CITY LIMITS: US city minimum wages and their relevance for the UK [Resolution Foundation chapter] March 2015

• Designing Thoughtful Minimum Wage Policy at the State and Local Levels  [Hamilton Project Report] June 2014

• “Finally a Chance for Facts to Decide.” [NY Times online Op-ed]

• The Minimum We Can Do [NY Times Op-ed]

• Testimony on Minimum Wages for the Senate HELP Committee March 14, 2013

• Casual versus Causal Inference: Time series edition [Blog post]

• The Poverty of Minimum Wage “Facts” [Blog post]

• Separating signal from noise: a review of 12 major studies on minimum wages and poverty [Blog post]

• Minimum Wages and Job Growth: a Statistical Artifact [Blog post]

Research Papers:

• “Minimum Wages in the 21st Century” with Attila Lindner. Handbook of Labor Economics Chapter.
  • NBER Working Paper

• “Seeing Beyond the Trees: Using Machine Learning to Estimate the Impact of Minimum Wages on Labor Market Outcomes” with Doruk Cengiz, Attila Lindner, and David Zentler-Munro. (February 2021) NBER Working Paper No. 28399. Under review, invited for special volume at Journal of Labor Economics.

• “City Limits: What do Local-Area Minimum Wages Do?” with Attila Lindner. 2021. Journal of Economic Perspectives .

• “The effect of minimum wages on low-wage jobs” with Doruk Cengiz, Attila Lindner and Ben Zipperer.  Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2019 (Vol. 134, Issue 3). Older version from February 2018.
  • • Research Brief 
    • Media coverage: US News, CNN, Slate, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post (2), Boston Globe, BBC, NPR, Vox.com

• “Minimum Wages and the Distribution of Family Incomes”.  American Economic Journal – Applied. (2019).  (Older versions:  February 2017, December 2013.
  • WCEG Research Brief  
  •  Press coverage: Vox.com, Bloomberg, Huffington Post, New York Times, NPR
  •  Replication package

• “Credible Research Designs for Minimum Wage Studies: A Response to Neumark, Salas and Wascher” with Sylvia Allegretto, Michael Reich and Ben Zipperer. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 2017 (Vol. 70, Issue 3). 

• “Pooling Multiple Case Studies using Synthetic Controls: An Application to Minimum Wage Policies”  IZA Discussion Paper 8944 with Ben Zipperer (March 2015)

•  “Minimum Wage Shocks, Employment Flows, and Labor Market Frictions” with T. William Lester and Michael Reich. Journal of Labor Economics (forthcoming). This version: Oct 2014.  Nov 2013 version here. April 2012 version here. IZA Discussion Paper from 2011 available here.

•  “Minimum Wages and the Distribution of Family Incomes” (January 2014)

• “Minimum Wages and Aggregate Job Growth: Causal Effect or Statistical Artifact?” IZA Discussion Paper 7674 (October 2013).

• “Credible Research Designs for Minimum Wage Studies” with Sylvia Allegretto, Michael Reich and Ben Zipperer. IZA Discussion Paper 7638 (September 2013). Older version from June 2013 available here.

• “Do Minimum Wages Really Reduce Teen Employment? Accounting for Heterogeneity and Selectivity in State Panel Data”  with Sylvia Allegretto and Michael Reich. Industrial Relations, March 2011.

• “Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders: Estimates Using Contiguous Counties” with T. William Lester and Michael Reich. Review of Economics and Statistics, 2010 (Vol.92, Issue 4).

• “The economic impacts of a citywide minimum wage” with Suresh Naidu and Michael Reich. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, July 2007.