From: rhinoceros (rhinoceros@freemail.gr)
Date: Mon Oct 27 2003 - 07:38:53 MST
[Mermaid]
btw..having said all that..i dont know how things will improve if the concept of minimum wage is abolished. I can make guesses, but they would be just that..guesses..
if we are talking about reforms..i'd start by eliminating high school kids from working in low paying, unskilled, minimum wage jobs...i dont see the point of it anyways..does anyone else?
[rhinoceros]
Yes, it is hard to say. Effective answers to this kind of questions do not lie in logic applied to oversimplified models; the answers are in the empirical data, and they are never as clear as we would like them to be...
I understand that it is always tempting to reassure ourselves by using a simple model and believe that we have figured it all out, and to think that those bonehead professors who publish thousands of pages of studies are wasting their time.
For example: Does the folllowing argument ring a bell to anyone?
"Competition is wasteful because it duplicates efforts, produces incompatible approaches which make perfectly good parts to be thrown away, it throws away good stuff which was not marketed probably or just lost to marketing muscle, etc... etc..."
I don't think this argument can be effectively countered just by logic. I could always try. I could say that this model of economy is simplistic (and offer another, equally simplistic one), about human nature and motivation, the intractability and diversity of human needs, culture-driven consumption biases, local availability and transportation issues, affordability, information availability and acceptance, etc. but these arguments would be as good as any if there were no empirical data to support my conclusions. Or, I could choose to get into studies based on empirical data, which contradict the claims of the initial model while they fit to a different, more suitable model for this case.
So, I put some time into collecting some URLs for studies about minimum wages and other related topics. I haven't read them, of course; maybe I will when I have the time. Putting them in this post was a handy way to keep them all bookmarked.
After a cursory glance, I think that a difficulty with interpretting the data is that the effect of a minimum wage is affected by the social policies in a country. It does seem to affect the employment of the young somehow in some countries. Not sure if it is about work for pocket-money, though. I'll have to read more.
=========================
http://www.iue.it/LIB/Collections/NewWPJulyAugust2003.shtml
The effects of payroll tax subsidies for low wage workers on firms level decisions (Bruno Crépon, Paris 2003)
http://www.crest.fr/doctravail/document/2003-06.pdf
Wages, productivity and worker characteristics (Bruno Crépon, Paris 2003)
http://www.crest.fr/doctravail/document/2003-04.pdf
Production synergies, technology adoption, unemployement, and wages (Gwen Eudey, Washington 2001)
http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2001/200129/ 200129pap.pdf
Minimum wages, labor market institutions, and youth employement (David Neumark, Washington 2003)
http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2003/200323/ 200323pap.pdf
Wage bargaining and vertical differentiation (Emanuele Bacchiega, Louvain-la-Neuve 2002)
http://www.core.ucl.ac.be/services/psfiles/dp02/dp2002-76.pdf
Redistribution with capital mobility and unions' wage setting (Manuel Leite-Monteiro, Louvain-la-Neuve 2002)
http://www.core.ucl.ac.be/services/psfiles/dp02/dp2002-3.pdf
Minimum wage, employement and monopsonistic competition (V. Bhaskar, Colchester 2002)
http://www.essex.ac.uk/economics/discussion-papers/papers-text/ dp548.pdf
Wage differentiation via subsidised general training (V. Bhaskar, Colchester 2002)
http://www.essex.ac.uk/economics/discussion-papers/papers-text/ dp549.pdf
Wage and price Philipps curves (Peter Flaschel, Oxford 2003)
http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/economics/papers/2003/W16/PFHMK3a.pdf
========================
http://econpapers.hhs.se/paper/izaizadps/
The Macroeconomics of Labor and Credit Market Imperfections
ftp://repec.iza.org/RePEc/Discussionpaper/dp179.pdf
The European Phillips Curve: Does the NAIRU Exist?
ftp://repec.iza.org/RePEc/Discussionpaper/dp876.pdf
Inflation, Minimum Wage and Other Wages: An Econometric Study on French Macroeconomic Data
ftp://repec.iza.org/RePEc/Discussionpaper/dp861.pdf
and
History of Historical Statistics of the United States
ftp://repec.iza.org/RePEc/Discussionpaper/dp858.pdf
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