After an initial decline in the level of real minimum-wage rates, there were series of unusually large increases in their levels - 70 and 50 per cent - during the years 1999-2002 in the Czech and Slovak Republics, respectively. Using information from matched employee-employer data sets, we look at the impact of minimum-wage hikes on both wages and employment. Our results suggest that there are some, but not substantial, job losses in reaction to minimum-wage hikes and that the impact on firm wages is rather large, implying that further increases of similar magnitude might very well have negative consequences for employment. Copyright 2004, CEIS, Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.