The push for a U.S. living wage: Modeling for inflation, unemployment, both, or neither

Todd J. Barry

Economic Thought journal, 2020, issue 2, 68-105, 106-136

Abstract: Few U.S. economic issues in the last half-century have engendered as frequent political controversies as the minimum wage. This article looks at both the politics behind efforts to make the minimum wage a “living wage” in recent elections, and the many relevant economic effects, such as inflation and unemployment, from both a macro- and a microeconomic perspective. The paper offers several original conceptual models, in various economic situations, which examine the regressions of eight U.S. states over the 1996-2016 period. The results show that high minimum wages can harm employment, but that moderation can aid stagnant wages in economically-improving inflationary settings without drastically reducing employment short-term.

JEL-codes: E24 E31 E32 J31 J32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bas:econth:y:2020:i:2:p:68-105,106-136

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