The role of beliefs in supporting economic policies: The case of the minimum wage

Natalia Mishagina and Claude Montmarquette

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2021, vol. 188, issue C, 1059-1087

Abstract: Using a sizeable online experiment on a proposed policy to raise the minimum wage in Quebec, we show that support for the policy is consistent with participants’ self-interest and social preferences and, most importantly, with their beliefs about the policy's outcomes. This finding is significant because, unlike policy-invariant sociodemographic characteristics, beliefs can be modified. We then show that beliefs about the outcomes vary with participants’ knowledge about the minimum wage, numeracy, and economic literacy. We also show how participants without a good knowledge of facts about the minimum wage (its actual level, its relation with the average wage, and the proportion of workers earning the minimum wage), change their opinion after having been informed with the correct information.

Keywords: Minimum wage policy; Beliefs; Economic experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 C99 H89 J39 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268121002675
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:jeborg:v:188:y:2021:i:c:p:1059-1087

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.06.028

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().