Minimum Wages, Inequality and Globalization

Thomas (Tim) Gindling and Katherine Terrell

William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series from William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Abstract: This paper contributes to our understanding of the impact of institutions on incomes of workers in developing countries by rigorously addressing the question as to whether changes in minimum wages can change the inequality of the distribution of earnings. More specifically, we analyze whether changes in Costa Rica’s complex institution of multiple minimum wages in the 1980s and 1990s acted as a countervailing force to the unequalizing effect of globalization. Using annual data on workers from the 1987-1997 household surveys, it is shown that changes in the legal minimum wages did indeed have an effect on wage inequality and that these changes would not have been captured using the simple interpretation of minimum wages found in much of the literature.

Keywords: minimum wages; employment; wages; Costa Rica (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 J31 J38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2004-05-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.wdi.umich.edu/files/Publications/WorkingPapers/wp700.pdf
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.wdi.umich.edu/files/Publications/WorkingPapers/wp700.pdf [302 Found]--> https://wdi.umich.edu/files/Publications/WorkingPapers/wp700.pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Minimum Wages, Inequality and Globalization (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wdi:papers:2004-700

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series from William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan 724 E. University Ave, Wyly Hall 1st Flr, Ann Arbor MI 48109. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by WDI ().