The impact of local minimum wages on employment: evidence from Italy in the 1950s

Guido de Blasio and Samuele Poy ()

No 953, Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: This paper measures the impact of wage zones � minimum wage differentials at the province level � on Italy's local labor markets during the 1950s. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design, it finds that for the industrial sectors covered under wage zones there was an increase in employment when one crossed the border from a high-wage province into a low-wage one; the effect diminished, however, as the distance from the boundary increased. The paper also illustrates that the impact on the overall (non-farm) private sector, which includes both covered and uncovered sectors, was basically zero. On balance, the scheme generated some reallocation of economic activity, albeit confined to areas close to the province border.

Keywords: minimum wages; regional economic activity; regression discontinuity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 J38 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-his, nep-lab, nep-law, nep-lma and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/temi-disc ... 0953/en_tema_953.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Impact of Local Minimum Wages on Employment: Evidence from Italy in the 1950s (2014)
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:bdi:wptemi:td_953_14

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().