IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/jmp/jm2015/psl76.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Employment Effects of the Minimum Wage: A Selection Ratio Approach to Measuring Treatment Effects

Author

Listed:
  • David Pence Slichter

Abstract

This paper studies the employment effects of the minimum wage using a novel empirical strategy which can allow the researcher to identify treatment effects when more than one control group is available but each such control group is imperfect. Expanding on previous researchers who have compared regions which increase the minimum wage with nearby regions which do not change the minimum wage, I compare border counties in which the minimum wage increases to the set of neighboring counties, the set of neighbor-of-neighboring counties, etc. The key innovation is to model the ratio of the bias of these comparisons. The model I select uses the relative similarity of control groups to the treated group on observables as a guide to their relative similarity on unobservables. Crucially, models of this type have a testable implication when there are enough control groups. Using data from the United States, I find that recent minimum wage increases have produced modest or zero disemployment effects for teenagers.

Suggested Citation

  • David Pence Slichter, 2015. "The Employment Effects of the Minimum Wage: A Selection Ratio Approach to Measuring Treatment Effects," 2015 Papers psl76, Job Market Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:jmp:jm2015:psl76
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ideas.repec.org/jmp/2015/psl76.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hansen, Lars Peter, 1982. "Large Sample Properties of Generalized Method of Moments Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 1029-1054, July.
    2. Sandra E. Black, 1999. "Do Better Schools Matter? Parental Valuation of Elementary Education," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 114(2), pages 577-599.
    3. Laura Giuliano, 2013. "Minimum Wage Effects on Employment, Substitution, and the Teenage Labor Supply: Evidence from Personnel Data," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(1), pages 155-194.
    4. 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.
    5. Joseph G. Altonji & Todd E. Elder & Christopher R. Taber, 2005. "Selection on Observed and Unobserved Variables: Assessing the Effectiveness of Catholic Schools," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(1), pages 151-184, February.
    6. Sylvia A. Allegretto & Arindrajit Dube & Michael Reich, 2011. "Do Minimum Wages Really Reduce Teen Employment? Accounting for Heterogeneity and Selectivity in State Panel Data," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(2), pages 205-240, April.
    7. Whitney K. Newey & Richard J. Smith, 2004. "Higher Order Properties of Gmm and Generalized Empirical Likelihood Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(1), pages 219-255, January.
    8. 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.
    9. David Card, 1992. "Do Minimum Wages Reduce Employment? A Case Study of California, 1987–89," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 46(1), pages 38-54, October.
    10. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2010. "Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 281-355, June.
    11. Addison, John T. & Blackburn, McKinley L. & Cotti, Chad D., 2009. "Do minimum wages raise employment? Evidence from the U.S. retail-trade sector," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 397-408, August.
    12. Sen, Anindya & Rybczynski, Kathleen & Van De Waal, Corey, 2011. "Teen employment, poverty, and the minimum wage: Evidence from Canada," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 36-47, January.
    13. David Neumark & William L. Wascher, 2008. "Minimum Wages," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262141027, December.
    14. Joseph J. Sabia & Richard V. Burkhauser & Benjamin Hansen, 2012. "Are the Effects of Minimum Wage Increases Always Small? New Evidence from a Case Study of New York State," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 65(2), pages 350-376, April.
    15. John T. Addison & McKinley L. Blackburn & Chad D. Cotti, 2012. "The Effect of Minimum Wages on Labour Market Outcomes: County-Level Estimates from the Restaurant-and-Bar Sector," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 50(3), pages 412-435, September.
    16. Alberto Abadie & Javier Gardeazabal, 2003. "The Economic Costs of Conflict: A Case Study of the Basque Country," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 113-132, March.
    17. Marcus Hagedorn & Fatih Karahan & Iourii Manovskii & Kurt Mitman, 2013. "Unemployment Benefits and Unemployment in the Great Recession: The Role of Equilibrium Effects," Staff Reports 646, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    18. 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.
    19. Currie, Janet & Thomas, Duncan, 1995. "Does Head Start Make a Difference?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 341-364, June.
    20. Ropponen, Olli, 2010. "Minimum Wages and Employment: Replication of Card and Krueger (1994) Using the CIC Estimator," MPRA Paper 25181, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. 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.
    22. Susan Athey & Guido W. Imbens, 2006. "Identification and Inference in Nonlinear Difference-in-Differences Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(2), pages 431-497, March.
    23. Imbens, Guido W & Angrist, Joshua D, 1994. "Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(2), pages 467-475, March.
    24. Joshua Angrist & Miikka Rokkanen, 2012. "Wanna Get Away? RD Identification Away from the Cutoff," NBER Working Papers 18662, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    25. Yingying Dong & Arthur Lewbel, 2015. "Identifying the Effect of Changing the Policy Threshold in Regression Discontinuity Models," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(5), pages 1081-1092, December.
    26. C. Kirabo Jackson, 2010. "Do Students Benefit from Attending Better Schools? Evidence from Rule-based Student Assignments in Trinidad and Tobago," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(549), pages 1399-1429, December.
    27. Joseph G. Altonji & Richard K. Mansfield, 2014. "Group-Average Observables as Controls for Sorting on Unobservables When Estimating Group Treatment Effects: the Case of School and Neighborhood Effects," NBER Working Papers 20781, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    28. Baker, Michael & Benjamin, Dwayne & Stanger, Shuchita, 1999. "The Highs and Lows of the Minimum Wage Effect: A Time-Series Cross-Section Study of the Canadian Law," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(2), pages 318-350, April.
    29. Lee, David S., 2008. "Randomized experiments from non-random selection in U.S. House elections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 675-697, February.
    30. Imbens, Guido W. & Lemieux, Thomas, 2008. "Regression discontinuity designs: A guide to practice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 615-635, February.
    31. Gorry, Aspen, 2013. "Minimum wages and youth unemployment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 57-75.
    32. Joseph Sabia, 2009. "The Effects of Minimum Wage Increases on Retail Employment and Hours: New Evidence from Monthly CPS Data," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 30(1), pages 75-97, March.
    33. Neumark, David & Wascher, William L., 2007. "Minimum Wages and Employment," Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics, now publishers, vol. 3(1–2), pages 1-182, March.
    34. 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..
    35. Marcus Hagedorn & Fatih Karahan & Iourii Manovskii & Kurt Mitman, 2013. "Unemployment Benefits and Unemployment in the Great Recession: The Role of Macro Effects," NBER Working Papers 19499, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    36. Isaac Sorkin, 2015. "Are There Long-Run Effects of the Minimum Wage?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(2), pages 306-333, April.
    37. Chamberlain, Gary, 1987. "Asymptotic efficiency in estimation with conditional moment restrictions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 305-334, March.
    38. Anindya Sen & Hideki Ariizumi, 2013. "Teen families, welfare transfers, and the minimum wage: evidence from Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 46(1), pages 338-360, February.
    39. Breusch, T S & Pagan, A R, 1979. "A Simple Test for Heteroscedasticity and Random Coefficient Variation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(5), pages 1287-1294, September.
    40. repec:fth:prinin:300 is not listed on IDEAS
    41. Rebecca A. Maynard & Kenneth A. Couch & Coady Wing & Thomas D. Cook, 2013. "Strengthening The Regression Discontinuity Design Using Additional Design Elements: A Within‐Study Comparison," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(4), pages 853-877, September.
    42. Jushan Bai, 2009. "Panel Data Models With Interactive Fixed Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(4), pages 1229-1279, July.
    43. Abadie, Alberto & Diamond, Alexis & Hainmueller, Jens, 2010. "Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies: Estimating the Effect of California’s Tobacco Control Program," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 105(490), pages 493-505.
    44. Jordan D. Matsudaira, 2014. "Monopsony in the Low-Wage Labor Market? Evidence from Minimum Nurse Staffing Regulations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 96(1), pages 92-102, March.
    45. Danilov, Dmitry & Magnus, J.R.Jan R., 2004. "On the harm that ignoring pretesting can cause," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 122(1), pages 27-46, September.
    46. Arindrajit Dube & T. William Lester & Michael Reich, 2010. "Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders: Estimates Using Contiguous Counties," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(4), pages 945-964, November.
    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. Jales, Hugo & Yu, Zhengfei, 2020. "Labor market policies in a Roy-Rosen bargaining economy," CLEF Working Paper Series 29, Canadian Labour Economics Forum (CLEF), University of Waterloo.
    2. David Neumark, 2019. "The Econometrics and Economics of the Employment Effects of Minimum Wages: Getting from Known Unknowns to Known Knowns," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 20(3), pages 293-329, August.
    3. Amanda Y. Agan & Michael D. Makowsky, 2018. "The Minimum Wage, EITC, and Criminal Recidivism," Working Papers 616, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    4. Das, Tirthatanmoy & Polachek, Solomon, 2017. "Micro Foundations of Earnings Differences," IZA Discussion Papers 10922, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. David Neumark, 2017. "The Employment Effects of Minimum Wages: Some Questions We Need to Answer," NBER Working Papers 23584, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. David Neumark & Peter Shirley, 2021. "Myth or Measurement: What Does the New Minimum Wage Research Say about Minimum Wages and Job Loss in the United States?," NBER Working Papers 28388, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. David Neumark, 2019. "The Econometrics and Economics of the Employment Effects of Minimum Wages: Getting from Known Unknowns to Known Knowns," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 20(3), pages 293-329, August.
    3. David Neumark & J.M. Ian Salas & William Wascher, 2013. "Revisiting the Minimum Wage-Employment Debate: Throwing Out the Baby with the Bathwater?," NBER Working Papers 18681, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Kate Rybczynski & Anindya Sen, 2018. "Employment Effects Of The Minimum Wage: Panel Data Evidence From Canadian Provinces," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 36(1), pages 116-135, January.
    5. Jonathan Meer & Jeremy West, 2016. "Effects of the Minimum Wage on Employment Dynamics," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 51(2), pages 500-522.
    6. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2021. "Answering causal questions using observational data," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2021-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    7. Young Cheol Jung & Adian McFarlane & Anupam Das, 2021. "The effect of minimum wages on consumption in Canada," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 32(1), pages 65-89, March.
    8. Evan Totty, 2017. "The Effect Of Minimum Wages On Employment: A Factor Model Approach," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(4), pages 1712-1737, October.
    9. Marlies Piek & Dieter von Fintel, 2020. "Sectoral minimum wages in South Africa: Disemployment by firm size and trade exposure," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(3), pages 462-482, May.
    10. Dolton, Peter & Bondibene, Chiara Rosazza & Stops, Michael, 2015. "Identifying the employment effect of invoking and changing the minimum wage: A spatial analysis of the UK," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 54-76.
    11. Addison, John T. & Blackburn, McKinley L. & Cotti, Chad D., 2013. "Minimum wage increases in a recessionary environment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 30-39.
    12. José Azar & Emiliano Huet-Vaughn & Ioana Marinescu & Bledi Taska & Till von Wachter, 2019. "Minimum Wage Employment Effects and Labor Market Concentration," NBER Working Papers 26101, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. David Neumark & Peter Shirley, 2022. "Myth or measurement: What does the new minimum wage research say about minimum wages and job loss in the United States?," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(4), pages 384-417, October.
    14. Shanshan Liu & Thomas J. Hyclak & Krishna Regmi, 2016. "Impact of the Minimum Wage on Youth Labor Markets," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 30(1), pages 18-37, March.
    15. Daniel Aaronson & Brian J Phelan, 2019. "Wage Shocks and the Technological Substitution of Low‐wage Jobs," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(617), pages 1-34.
    16. John Addison & McKinley Blackburn & Chad Cotti, 2015. "On the robustness of minimum wage effects: geographically-disparate trends and job growth equations," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-16, December.
    17. David Neumark, 2017. "The Employment Effects of Minimum Wages: Some Questions We Need to Answer," NBER Working Papers 23584, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Michael R. Strain & Peter Brummund, 2016. "Real and permanent minimum wages," AEI Economics Working Papers 875967, American Enterprise Institute.
    19. Knabe Andreas & Schöb Ronnie & Thum Marcel, 2014. "Der flächendeckende Mindestlohn," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 15(2), pages 133-157, June.
    20. Yonezawa, Koichi & Gómez, Miguel I. & McLaughlin, Edward W., 2022. "Impacts of Minimum Wage Increases in the US Retail Sector: Full-time versus Part-time Employment," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 47(2), May.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J38 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Public Policy
    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models
    • C29 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:jmp:jm2015:psl76. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: . General contact details of provider: https://ideas.repec.org/jmp.html .

    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: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://ideas.repec.org/jmp.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.