EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Turning a Blind Eye: Costly Enforcement, Credible Commitment and Minimum Wage Laws

ArnabK. Basu, NancyH. Chau and Ravi Kanbur

Economic Journal, 2010, vol. 120, issue 543, 244-269

Abstract: In many countries, non-compliance with minimum wage legislation is widespread and authorities may be seen as having turned a blind eye to legislation they have themselves passed. We show that turning a blind eye can indeed be an equilibrium phenomenon with "ex post" credibility, in a model of minimum wage policy with imperfect competition, imperfect enforcement and imperfect commitment. Since credible enforcement requires costly "ex post" transfer of income from employers to workers, a government concerned only with efficiency but not with distribution is shown, paradoxically, to be unable to credibly elicit efficiency improvements via a minimum wage reform. Copyright © The Author(s). Journal compilation © Royal Economic Society 2009.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Working Paper: Turning a Blind Eye: Costly Enforcement, Credible Commitment and Minimum Wage Laws (2007) Downloads
Working Paper: Turning a Blind Eye: Costly Enforcement, Credible Commitment and Minimum Wage Laws (2005) Downloads
Working Paper: Turning a Blind Eye: Costly Enforcement, Credible Commitment and Minimum Wage Laws (2005) Downloads
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:ecj:econjl:v:120:y:2010:i:543:p:244-269

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... al.asp?ref=0013-0133

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Journal is currently edited by Martin Cripps, Steve Machin, Woulter den Haan, Andrea Galeotti, Rachel Griffith and Frederic Vermeulen

More articles in Economic Journal from Royal Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing () and Christopher F. Baum ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:ecj:econjl:v:120:y:2010:i:543:p:244-269