Optimal Minimum Wage

Arantza Gorostiaga and Juan F Rubio-Ramirez

No 302, 2004 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics

Abstract: This paper studies the optimality of a minimum wage law when it is used, jointly with a distortionary tax-transfer scheme, to redistribute income among agents with different marginal productivity. We build a dynamic and stochastic general equilibrium model with a Ramsey planner making decisions on distortionary taxes, transfers, debt and minimum wage levels. In the economy there are two types of households; a low skilled and a high skilled type. We find that the optimality of minimum wages depends on the elasticity of substitution between labor inputs in the production technology and the size of each group in the total population. The sign and size of the elasticity of labor supply play also a crucial role in the setting of optimal policies. Finally, when it is assumed that tax revenues finance not only transfers, but also public spending, the probability of an optimal minimum wage law increase

Keywords: Ramsey Problem; Minimun Wage; Redistribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E61 E62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:red:sed004:302

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