IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/jecper/v13y1999i2p221-230.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Retrospectives: American Economists in the Progressive Era on the Minimum Wage

Author

Listed:
  • Robert E. Prasch

Abstract

Beginning in 1912, a number of states passed minimum wage legislation that applied exclusively to women and minors. These tentative experiments in economic legislation ended in 1923 when the Supreme Court overturned the District of Columbia's minimum wage law. Remarkably, at this time virtually all professional American economists supported some variety of minimum wage legislation; however, they did not all give the same reasons. This paper briefly examines the context in which this minimum wage legislation was passed and then surveys several of the arguments that American economists gave in support of minimum wage laws.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert E. Prasch, 1999. "Retrospectives: American Economists in the Progressive Era on the Minimum Wage," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 221-230, Spring.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:13:y:1999:i:2:p:221-230
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/jep.13.2.221
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.13.2.221
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kanazawa, Mark Tooru, 2023. "The Efficiency of Occupational Licensing during the Gilded and Progressive Eras: Evidence from Judicial Review," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(4), pages 1221-1252, December.
    2. Luca Fiorito, 2012. "Between Progressivism and Institutionalism Albert Benedict Wolfe on Eugenics," Department of Economics University of Siena 644, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    3. Ellen Mutari, 2004. "Brothers and Breadwinners: Legislating Living Wages in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 62(2), pages 129-148.
    4. Gautié, Jérôme, 2015. "D'un siècle à l'autre, salaire minimum, science économique et débat public aux États-Unis, en France et au Royaume-Uni (1890-2015)," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) 1518, CEPREMAP.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J38 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Public Policy
    • B29 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - Other

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:13:y:1999:i:2:p:221-230. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.