IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-03427500.html

Productivity, Non-compliance and the Minimum Wage

Author

Listed:
  • Eliane El Badaoui

    (EconomiX - EconomiX - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Frank Walsh

Abstract

Many informal firms in developing countries would not be viable if they were to comply with the minimum wage law. This means the authorities have an incentive to turn a blind eye to non-enforcement in a substantial share of firms. We also survey enforcement mechanisms for the minimum wage across developing countries and find that worker complaints are an important element in determining whether firms will be inspected for non-compliance or not. We develop a theoretical monopsony model which rationalises the stylised facts we observe. For a given minimum wage, the government can choose a level of enforcement and penalties for non-compliance such that employment will not fall for any optimising firm, irrespective of their productivity. Low productivity firm's optimal choice of employment and wage will be unaffected by the introduction of the minimum wage. High productivity firms comply so that wage and employment effects are non-negative for these firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Eliane El Badaoui & Frank Walsh, 2022. "Productivity, Non-compliance and the Minimum Wage," Post-Print hal-03427500, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03427500
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Wang, Maolin & Lin, Huiting & Huang, Yehua & Lu, Huiyan, 2023. "Poverty alleviation and firm productivity: Evidence from China's minimum wage system," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    2. Laszlo Goerke & Markus Pannenberg, 2025. "Minimum wage non-compliance: the role of co-determination," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 60(2), pages 365-402, October.
    3. Gindling, T. H. & Ronconi, Lucas, 2023. "Minimum Wage Policy and Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 12931, Inter-American Development Bank.
    4. Alzate, David & Carranza, Eliana & Duran-Franch, Joana & Packard, Truman & Proffen, Celina, 2024. "How Regulations Impact the Labor Market: A Review of the Literatures on Product and Labor Market Regulations," IZA Discussion Papers 17536, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Eliane El Badaoui & Olivier Bargain & Prudence Magejo & Eric Strobl & Frank Walsh, 2023. "A Search Model with Self-Employment and Heterogeneity in Managerial Ability," Working Papers hal-04159859, HAL.
    6. Yang, Zhengxiong & Liu, Mingwei & Zhang, Shiwei & Yin, Chenxi, 2024. "The effects of monthly minimum wages on the labor market," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    7. Nicolas Gonzalez-Pampillon & Javier Vazquez-Grenno, 2025. "Minimum wages and low wage workers: Compliance as non-employment margin," CEP Discussion Papers dp2096, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    8. Nicolás González-Pampillón & Javier Vázquez-Grenno & Universitat de Barcelona & IEB, 2025. "Minimum wages and low wage workers: Compliance asnon-employment margin," Working Papers 2025/06, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    9. Clemens, Jeffrey & Strain, Michael R., 2023. "Does Wage Theft Vary by Demographic Group? Evidence from Minimum Wage Increases," IZA Discussion Papers 16550, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Fietz, Katharina & Lakemann, Tabea & Beber, Bernd & Priebe, Jan & Lay, Jann, 2025. "Formalizing employment in Africa's small firms: Experimental evidence from Côte D'Ivoire," Ruhr Economic Papers 1149, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    11. Fietz, Katharina & Lakemann, Tabea & Beber, Bernd & Priebe, Jan & Lay, Jann, 2025. "Formalizing employment in Africa's small firms: Experimental evidence from Côte d‘Ivoire," VfS Annual Conference 2025 (Cologne): Revival of Industrial Policy 325459, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    12. Clemens, Jeffrey & Strain, Michael R., 2022. "Understanding “Wage Theft”: Evasion and avoidance responses to minimum wage increases," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    13. Bassier, Ihsaan, 2022. "Collective bargaining and spillovers in local labor markets," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118057, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. Ihsaan Bassier, 2022. "Collective bargaining and spillovers in local labor markets," CEP Discussion Papers dp1895, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements

    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:hal:journl:hal-03427500. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.