The Effect of Minimum Wages on Labor Market Outcomes: County-Level Estimates from the Restaurant-and-Bar Sector

John Addison, McKinley L. Blackburn () and Chad Cotti
Additional contact information
McKinley L. Blackburn: University of South Carolina, USA

Working Paper series from Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis

Abstract: We use county-level data on employment and earnings in the restaurant-and-bar sector to evaluate the impact of minimum wage changes on low-wage labor markets. Our empirical approach is similar to the literature that has used state-level panel data to estimate minimum-wage impacts, with the difference that we focus on a particular sector rather than demographic group. Our estimated models are consistent with a simple competitive model of the restaurant-and-bar labor market in which supply-and-demand factors affect both the equilibrium outcome and the probability that a minimum wage will be binding in any given time period. Our evidence does not suggest that minimum wages reduce employment in the overall restaurant-and-bar sector, after controls for trends in sector employment at the county level are incorporated in the model. Employment in this sector appears to exhibit a downward long-term trend in states that have increased their minimum wages relative to states that have not, thereby predisposing fixed-effects estimates towards finding negative employment effects.

Date: 2008-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.rcea.org/RePEc/pdf/wp02_08.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Effect of Minimum Wages on Labour Market Outcomes: County-Level Estimates from the Restaurant-and-Bar Sector (2012)
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:rim:rimwps:02_08

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper series from Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marco Savioli ().