John Horton

TUILES: Tuesday Informal Lunchtime Seminars Spring 2014

Tuesday, April 15th

KMC 8-170

Lunch will be available at 12:15 pm. The seminar begins at 12:30 pm.

“Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Minimum Wages”

John Horton

New job openings in an online labor market were randomly assigned an employer-specific hourly minimum wage. Higher minimum wages modestly decreased hiring but strongly increased the wages of hired workers. This increase in wages was due to both increased wage bidding by workers up to the minimum and employer selection of more productive, more experienced applicants. The effect of the minimum wage on earnings was negligible: despite strongly increasing wages, the minimum wage reduced the number hours worked.