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Wages and Hours Laws: What Do We Know? What Can Be Done?

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  • Charles C. Brown
  • Daniel S. Hamermesh

Abstract

We summarize recent research on the wage and employment effects of minimum wage laws in the U.S. and infer from non-U.S. studies of hours laws the likely effects of unchanging U.S. hours laws. Minimum wages in the U.S. have increasingly become a province of state governments, with the effective minimum wage now closely related to a state’s wage near the lower end of its wage distribution. Original estimates demonstrate how the 45-year failure to increase the exempt earnings level for salaried workers under U.S. hours laws has raised hours of lower-earning salaried workers and reduced their weekly earnings. The overall conclusion from the literature and the original work is that wages and hours laws in the U.S. have produced impacts in the directions predicted by economic theory, but that these effects have been quite small.

Suggested Citation

  • Charles C. Brown & Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2019. "Wages and Hours Laws: What Do We Know? What Can Be Done?," NBER Working Papers 25942, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25942
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Wages and Hours Laws: What Do We Know? What Can Be Done?
      by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog on 2019-08-22 20:32:33

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    Cited by:

    1. Kentaro Asai, 2022. "Working Hour Reform, Labor Demand and Productivity," PSE Working Papers halshs-03728157, HAL.
    2. Dario Tortarolo & Guillermo Cruces & Victoria Castillo, 2020. "It takes two to tango: Labour responses to an income tax holiday in Argentina," Discussion Papers 2020-07, Nottingham Interdisciplinary Centre for Economic and Political Research (NICEP).
    3. Quach, Simon, 2020. "The Labor Market Effects of Expanding Overtime Coverage," MPRA Paper 100613, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Kentaro Asai, 2022. "Working Hour Reform, Labor Demand and Productivity," Working Papers halshs-03728157, HAL.
    5. Leonard Goff, 2022. "Treatment Effects in Bunching Designs: The Impact of Mandatory Overtime Pay on Hours," Papers 2205.10310, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2024.
    6. Erich Battistin & Agar Brugiavini & Enrico Rettore & Guglielmo Weber, 2009. "The Retirement Consumption Puzzle: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 2209-2226, December.
    7. Arindrajit Dube & Ben Zipperer, 2024. "Own-Wage Elasticity: Quantifying the Impact of Minimum Wages on Employment," NBER Working Papers 32925, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • J38 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Public Policy

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