Minimum Wages, Labor Market Institutions, and Female Employment and Unemployment: A Cross-Country Analysis
Abstract
This paper estimates the effect of minimum wage regulation in 16 OECD countries, 1970-2008. Our treatment is motivated by Neumark and Wascher's (2004) seminal cross-country study using panel methods to estimate minimum wage effects among teenagers and young adults. Apart from the longer time interval examined here, a major departure of the present study is the focus on prime-age females, a group typically neglected in the component minimum wage literature. Another is our deployment of time-varying policy and institutional regressors. Yet another is our examination of unemployment and participation outcomes in addition to employment effects. We report strong evidence of adverse employment effects among adult females and lower participation, even if the unemployment effects are muted. Although we report some similar findings to Neumark and Wascher as to the role of labor market institutions and policies, we do not observe the same patterns in the institutional data; in particular, we can reject for our target group their finding of stronger disemployment effects in countries with the least regulated markets.Download Info
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Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number 5162.Length: 32 pages
Date of creation: Sep 2010
Date of revision:
Publication status: published in: Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 2012, 65 (4), 779-809
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5162
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Related research
Keywords: participation; cross-section time-series data; employment; unemployment; prime-age females; wage fixing machinery; minimum wages; OECD countries; labor market flexibility; labor market institutions and policies;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- J20 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - General
- J38 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Public Policy
- J48 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Particular Labor Markets; Public Policy
- J58 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Public Policy
- J88 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - Public Policy
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2010-09-11 (All new papers)
- NEP-LAB-2010-09-11 (Labour Economics)
- NEP-LTV-2010-09-11 (Unemployment, Inequality & Poverty)
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Bredemeier, Christian & Juessen, Falko, 2012. "Minimum Wages and Female Labor Supply in Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 6892, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
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