The Economic Effects of a Citywide Minimum Wage

Arindrajit Dube, Suresh Naidu and Michael Reich

ILR Review, 2007, vol. 60, issue 4, 522-543

Abstract: This paper presents the first study of the economic effects of a citywide minimum wage—San Francisco's adoption of an indexed minimum wage, set at $8.50 in 2004 and $9.14 by 2007. Compared to earlier benchmark studies by Card and Krueger and by Neumark and Wascher, this study surveys table-service as well as fast-food restaurants, includes more control groups, and collects data for more outcomes. The authors find that the policy increased worker pay and compressed wage inequality, but did not create any detectable employment loss among affected restaurants. The authors also find smaller amounts of measurement error than characterized the earlier studies, and so they can reject previous negative employment estimates with greater confidence. Fast-food and table-service restaurants responded differently to the policy, with a small price increase and substantial increases in job tenure and in the proportion of full-time workers among fast-food restaurants, but not among table-service restaurants.

Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (101)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001979390706000404 (text/html)

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:sae:ilrrev:v:60:y:2007:i:4:p:522-543

DOI: 10.1177/001979390706000404

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in ILR Review from Cornell University, ILR School
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().