Publications by Arindrajit Dube
Restaurant Employment, Minimum Wages, and Border Discontinuities
September 4, 2024 • Working Papers • By Arindrajit Dube, Michael Reich, Akash Bhatt and Denis Sosinskiy
Abstract Dube, Lester and Reich (2010, DLR), using state minimum wage discontinuities across bordering counties and Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages data, did not detect negative minimum wage effects…
Credible Research Designs for Minimum Wage Studies: A Response to Neumark, Salas and Wascher
May 1, 2017 • Scholarly Publications • By Sylvia A. Allegretto, Arindrajit Dube, Michael Reich and Ben Zipperer
ILR Review 70(3):559-592. May 2017. [accordions] [accordion title="Abstract" load="hide"]The authors assess the critique by Neumark, Salas, and Wascher (2014) of minimum wage studies that found small effects on teen employment. Data from 1979 to 2014 contradict NSW; the authors show that the disemployment suggested by a model assuming parallel trends across U.S. states mostly reflects differential pre-existing trends. A data-driven LASSO procedure that optimally corrects for state trends produces a small employment elasticity (–0.01). Even a highly sparse model rules out substantial disemployment effects, contrary to NSW’s claim that the authors discard too much information. Synthetic controls do place more weight on nearby states—confirming the value of regional controls—and generate an elasticity of ?0.04. A similar elasticity (?0.06) obtains from a design comparing contiguous border counties, which the authors show to be good controls. NSW’s preferred matching estimates mix treatment and control units, obtain poor matches, and find the highest employment declines where the relative minimum wage falls. These findings refute NSW’s key claims. [/accordion] [/accordions]
Minimum Wage Shocks, Employment Flows and Labor Market Frictions
July 1, 2016 • Scholarly Publications • By Arindrajit Dube, T. William Lester and Michael Reich
Journal of Labor Economics, 34(3):663-704. April 2016. [accordions] [accordion title="Abstract" load="hide"]We provide the first estimates of the effects of minimum wages on employment flows in the US labor market, identifying the impact by using policy discontinuities at state borders. We find that minimum wages have a sizable negative effect on employment flows but not on stocks. Separations and accessions fall among affected workers, especially those with low tenure. We do not find changes in the duration of nonemployment for separations or hires. This evidence is consistent with search models with endogenous separations. [/accordion] [/accordions]
Credible Research Designs for Minimum Wage Studies: A Response to Neumark, Salas and Wascher
September 1, 2015 • Working Papers • By Sylvia A. Allegretto, Arindrajit Dube, Michael Reich and Ben Zipperer
Abstract The authors assess the critique by Neumark, Salas, and Wascher (2014) of minimum wage studies that found small effects on teen employment. Data from 1979 to 2014 contradict NSW;…
Labor Market Impacts of San Francisco’s Minimum Wage
January 1, 2014 • Scholarly Publications • By Arindrajit Dube, Suresh Naidu and Michael Reich
In When Mandates Work, Michael Reich, Ken Jacobs, and Miranda Dietz, eds. University of California Press. January 2014. [accordions] [accordion title="Abstract" load="hide"]In November 2003 San Francisco voters passed a ballot proposition to enact a minimum wage covering all employers in the city. The new standard set a minimum wage at $8.50 per hour—over 26 percent above the then-current California minimum wage of $6.75—and an annual adjustment for cost of living increases (reaching $10.55 in 2013). This standard, which first became effective in late February 2004, constituted the highest minimum wage in the United States and the first implemented universal municipal minimum wage in a major city. In a prospective study of this policy, Reich and Laitinen (2003) estimated that about 54,000 workers, amounting to 10.6 percent of the city’s workforce, would receive wage increases, either directly or indirectly, if such a policy were adopted and that the increased wage costs on average would amount to about 1 percent of business operating costs. [/accordion] [/accordions]
Credible Research Designs for Minimum Wage Studies
September 1, 2013 • Working Papers • By Arindrajit Dube, Ben Zipperer, Michael Reich and Sylvia A. Allegretto
Abstract We assess alternative research designs for minimum wage studies. States in the U.S. with larger minimum wage increases differ from others in business cycle severity, increased inequality and polarization,…