IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jlabre/v36y2015i3p318-345.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effects of Minimum Wages on Total Employment: Evidence from Cyprus

Author

Listed:
  • Pandelis Mitsis

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between total employment and the minimum wage in the special case where only a number of occupations are covered by the relevant legislation. Empirical evidence is provided by analysing time series data from Cyprus, the only country in the European Union where the minimum wage coverage is limited to a small number of occupations. After addressing the issues of stationarity, dynamic specification and endogeneity that most of the existing literature ignores, evidence is found of a significant and negative relationship between the minimum wage and total employment. This result is robust across variations in the sample period and the measure of the minimum wage. In the framework of recently developed search and matching models, the findings suggest the existence of significant spill-over effects to the occupations that are not covered by the minimum wage legislation. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Pandelis Mitsis, 2015. "Effects of Minimum Wages on Total Employment: Evidence from Cyprus," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 318-345, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jlabre:v:36:y:2015:i:3:p:318-345
    DOI: 10.1007/s12122-015-9205-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s12122-015-9205-0
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s12122-015-9205-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blanchard, Olivier Jean & Quah, Danny, 1989. "The Dynamic Effects of Aggregate Demand and Supply Disturbances," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 655-673, September.
    2. Card, David & Krueger, Alan B, 1994. "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 772-793, September.
    3. Charles Brown & Curtis Gilroy & Andrew Kohen, 1982. "The Effect of the Minimum Wage on Employment and Unemployment: A Survey," NBER Working Papers 0846, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Blanchard, Olivier & Wolfers, Justin, 2000. "The Role of Shocks and Institutions in the Rise of European Unemployment: The Aggregate Evidence," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(462), pages 1-33, March.
    5. Edward M. Gramlich, 1976. "Impact of Minimum Wages on Other Wages, Employment, and Family Incomes," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 7(2), pages 409-462.
    6. Zivot, Eric & Andrews, Donald W K, 2002. "Further Evidence on the Great Crash, the Oil-Price Shock, and the Unit-Root Hypothesis," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 25-44, January.
    7. Christopher J. Flinn, 2006. "Minimum Wage Effects on Labor Market Outcomes under Search, Matching, and Endogenous Contact Rates," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(4), pages 1013-1062, July.
    8. David Card, 1992. "Using Regional Variation in Wages to Measure the Effects of the Federal Minimum Wage," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 46(1), pages 22-37, October.
    9. Ben S. Bernanke & Ilian Mihov, 1998. "Measuring Monetary Policy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(3), pages 869-902.
    10. Brown, Charles & Gilroy, Curtis & Kohen, Andrew, 1982. "The Effect of the Minimum Wage on Employment and Unemployment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 20(2), pages 487-528, June.
    11. Harbo, Ingrid, et al, 1998. "Asymptotic Inference on Cointegrating Rank in Partial Systems," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 16(4), pages 388-399, October.
    12. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2567-2627 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Søren Johansen & Rocco Mosconi & Bent Nielsen, 2000. "Cointegration analysis in the presence of structural breaks in the deterministic trend," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 3(2), pages 216-249.
    14. Pandelis Mitsis, 2012. "Effects of minimum wages on total employment where the legislative coverage is limited: Evidence from Cyprus time series data," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 05-2012, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    15. Christopher A. Pissarides, 2000. "Equilibrium Unemployment Theory, 2nd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262161877, December.
    16. David Card, 1992. "Using Regional Variation in Wages to Measure the Effects of the Federal Minimum Wage," Working Papers 680, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    17. Alfonso Arpaia & Gilles Mourre, 2012. "Institutions And Performance In European Labour Markets: Taking A Fresh Look At Evidence," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 1-41, February.
    18. Engle, Robert & Granger, Clive, 2015. "Co-integration and error correction: Representation, estimation, and testing," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 39(3), pages 106-135.
    19. William M. Boal & Michael R. Ransom, 1997. "Monopsony in the Labor Market," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(1), pages 86-112, March.
    20. Søren Johansen & Rocco Mosconi & Bent Nielsen, 2000. "Cointegration analysis in the presence of structural breaks in the deterministic trend," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 3(2), pages 216-249.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Hana Stojanova & Barbora Lietavcova & Ivona Vrdoljak Raguž, 2019. "The Dependence of Unemployment of the Senior Workforce upon Explanatory Variables in the European Union in the Context of Industry 4.0," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-9, January.
    2. Otto Lenhart, 2017. "The impact of minimum wages on population health: evidence from 24 OECD countries," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 18(8), pages 1031-1039, November.
    3. Pandelis Mitsis, 2019. "The Impact of the Minimum Wage on Wages and Work in Cyprus," Cyprus Economic Policy Review, University of Cyprus, Economics Research Centre, vol. 13(2), pages 72-101, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pandelis Mitsis, 2012. "Effects of minimum wages on total employment where the legislative coverage is limited: Evidence from Cyprus time series data," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 05-2012, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    2. Pandelis Mitsis, 2019. "The Impact of the Minimum Wage on Wages and Work in Cyprus," Cyprus Economic Policy Review, University of Cyprus, Economics Research Centre, vol. 13(2), pages 72-101, December.
    3. Peter Dolton, 2012. "The administration and impact of a national minimum wage: lessons for Germany," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 45(3), pages 201-208, December.
    4. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2101-2163 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Kerry Patterson & Michael A. Thornton, 2013. "A review of econometric concepts and methods for empirical macroeconomics," Chapters, in: Nigar Hashimzade & Michael A. Thornton (ed.), Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Empirical Macroeconomics, chapter 2, pages 4-42, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Juan A. Correa & Francisco Parro, 2020. "On the heterogeneous short‐term effects of minimum wages on labor demand," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 16(2), pages 184-195, June.
    7. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2021. "Answering causal questions using observational data," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2021-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    8. Leiva, Benjamin & Liu, Zhongyuan, 2019. "Energy and economic growth in the USA two decades later: Replication and reanalysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 89-99.
    9. Fatih Kaplan & Ayşe E. Ünal, 2020. "Industrial Production Index - Crude Oil Price Nexus: Russia, Kazakhstan And Azerbaijan," Economic Annals, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Belgrade, vol. 65(227), pages 119-142, October –.
    10. Machin, Stephen & Manning, Alan & Rahman, Lupin, 2002. "Where the minimum wage bites hard: the introduction of the UK national minimum wage to a low wage sector," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 20070, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Johannes W. Fedderke, 2022. "Identifying supply and demand shocks in the South African Economy, 1960–2020," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 90(3), pages 349-389, September.
    12. Zavodny, Madeline, 2000. "The effect of the minimum wage on employment and hours," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(6), pages 729-750, November.
    13. Peter Hull & Michal Kolesár & Christopher Walters, 2022. "Labor by design: contributions of David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(3), pages 603-645, July.
    14. Oliveira, Carlos, 2021. "How is the Minimum Wage Shaping the Wage Distribution: Minimum Wage, Spillovers, and Wage Inequality in Portugal," MPRA Paper 112534, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Richard Dickens & Stephen Machin & Alan Manning & David Metcalf & Jonathan Wadsworth & Stephen Woodland, 1995. "The Effect Of Minimum Wages On Uk Agriculture," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(1), pages 1-19, January.
    16. Tarlok Singh, 2017. "Are Current Account Deficits in the OECD Countries Sustainable? Robust Evidence from Time-Series Estimators," The International Trade Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 29-64, January.
    17. Holmlund, Bertil, 2014. "What do labor market institutions do?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 62-69.
    18. John D. Levendis, 2018. "Time Series Econometrics," Springer Texts in Business and Economics, Springer, number 978-3-319-98282-3, August.
    19. M. Kemal Biçerli & Merve Kocaman, 2019. "The Impact Of Minimum Wage On Unemployment, Prices, And Growth: A Multivariate Analysis For Turkey," Economic Annals, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Belgrade, vol. 64(221), pages 65-84, April – J.
    20. Kyriakos Emmanouilidis & Christos Karpetis, 2020. "The Defense–Growth Nexus: A Review of Time Series Methods and Empirical Results," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 86-104, January.
    21. Juan Carlos Cuestas & Luis A. Gil-Alana & Laura Sauci, 2020. "Public finances in the EU-27: Are they sustainable?," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 181-204, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Minimum wage; Coverage; Employment effects; Time series models; J38; J48; E24; C32;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • 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
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models

    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:spr:jlabre:v:36:y:2015:i:3:p:318-345. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.