Carl Nadler

Minimum Wages and Health: A Reassessment

July 7, 2020 • Working Papers • By Sylvia A. Allegretto and Carl Nadler

A growing literature has reported significant health effects of the minimum wage. Yet recently published articles have often focused on broad groups of less educated workers with no more than…

Are Local Minimum Wages Too High?

April 17, 2019 • Working Papers • By Carl Nadler, Sylvia A. Allegretto, Anna Godoey and Michael Reich

Working Paper #102-19 [accordions] [accordion title="Abstract" load="hide"]We measure the effects of six citywide minimum wages that ranged up to $13 in Chicago, the District of Columbia, Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose and Seattle, employing event study and synthetic control methods. Using aggregate data on average earnings and employment in the food services industry, we find significantly positive earnings increases and no significant employment losses. While such evidence suggests the policies raised the earnings of low-wage workers, as intended, a competing explanation is that the industry responds to wage increases by increasing their demand for more productive higher-wage workers, offsetting low-wage layoffs (i.e., labor-labor substitution). To tackle this key question, we present a theoretical framework that connects the responses estimated at the industry-level to the own- and cross-wage labor demand elasticities that summarize the total effect of the policies on workers. Using a calibration exercise, we find that the combination of average earnings gains and constant employment cannot be produced by labor-labor substitution unless there are also effects on hours. To test whether the minimum wage increases demand for higher-wage workers or reduces low-wage workers’ hours, we examine the effects of California’s recent state and local minimum wage policies on the food services industry. There we find no evidence of labor-labor substitution or hours responses. Thus, the most likely explanation for the responses we find in the cities is that the industry’s demand for low-wage workers is inelastic, and the policies raised their earnings. [/accordion] [/accordions]

‘Raise the wage’ advocates have reason for optimism

September 11, 2018 • Commentary • By Carl Nadler, Sylvia A. Allegretto and Michael Reich

The New Wave of Local Minimum Wage Policies: Evidence from Six Cities

September 6, 2018 • Report • By Sylvia A. Allegretto, Anna Godoey, Carl Nadler and Michael Reich

In recent years, a new wave of state and local activity has transformed minimum wage policy in the U.S. As of August 2018, ten large cities and seven states have…

Tipped Wage Effects on Earnings and Employment in Full-Service Restaurants

October 1, 2015 • Replication Data • By Sylvia A. Allegretto and Carl Nadler

Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, 54(4):622–647. October 2015. [accordions] [accordion title="Abstract" load="hide"]We exploit more than 20 years of changes in state-level tipped wage policy and estimate earnings and employment effects of the tipped wage using county-level panel data on full-service restaurants (FSR). We extend earlier work by Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010) and compare outcomes between contiguous counties that straddle a state border. We find a 10-percent increase in the tipped wage increases earnings in FSRs about 0.4 percent. Employment elasticities are sensitive to the inclusion of controls for unobserved spatial heterogeneity. In our preferred models, we find small, insignificant effects of the tipped wage on FSR employment. [/accordion] [/accordions]