IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/32902.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Restaurant Employment, Minimum Wages, and Border Discontinuities

Author

Listed:
  • Arindrajit Dube
  • Michael Reich
  • Akash Bhatt
  • Denis Sosinskiy

Abstract

Dube, Lester and Reich (2010, DLR), using state minimum wage discontinuities across bordering counties and Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages data, did not detect negative minimum wage effects on restaurant employment. Jha, Neumark and Rodriguez-Lopez (2024, JNR) claim that looking within multi-state commuting zones and using County Business Patterns data provides a superior approach to DLR and does find disemployment effects. We show that JNR’s results are confounded by parallel trends violations in the 1990s, when minimum wage events were rare and small in magnitude; JNR’s outmoded two-way-fixed-effects model amplifies the biases introduced by these violations. Our estimates using their specifications and data on only post-2000 data fail to detect disemployment effects. The same results hold using QCEW and ACS datasets. Our preferred event study difference-in-differences approach, which analyzes only data that fall clearly within an event’s window, also does not detect negative employment effects. This result holds whether we compare across all states, look within commuting zones or within border county pairs, and regardless of the data set or time period.

Suggested Citation

  • Arindrajit Dube & Michael Reich & Akash Bhatt & Denis Sosinskiy, 2024. "Restaurant Employment, Minimum Wages, and Border Discontinuities," NBER Working Papers 32902, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32902
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w32902.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sylvia Allegretto & Arindrajit Dube & Michael Reich & Ben Zipperer, 2017. "Credible Research Designs for Minimum Wage Studies," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 70(3), pages 559-592, May.
    2. Sabrina Lucia Di Addario & Zhexin Feng & Michel Serafinelli, 2024. "Inventors' Coworker Networks and Innovation," Development Working Papers 497, Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, University of Milano.
    3. Goodman-Bacon, Andrew, 2021. "Difference-in-differences with variation in treatment timing," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 225(2), pages 254-277.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Arindrajit Dube & Attila S. Lindner, 2024. "Minimum Wages in the 21st Century," NBER Working Papers 32878, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Demir, Gökay, 2024. "Labor Market Frictions and Spillover Effects from Publicly Announced Sectoral Minimum Wages," IZA Discussion Papers 17510, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. repec:ags:aaea22:343648 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Caliendo, Marco & Olthaus, Rebecca & Pestel, Nico, 2025. "Long-term employment effects of the minimum wage in Germany: New data and estimators," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    5. Justin C. Wiltshire, 2023. "Walmart Supercenters and Monopsony Power: How A Large, Low-Wage Employer Impacts Local Labor Markets," Department Discussion Papers 2304, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.
    6. Agata Maida & Cristina Tealdi, 2021. "Does Employment Protection Affect Qualification Mismatch?," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 59(3), pages 701-729, September.
    7. Katarina Zigova & Thomas Zwick, 2025. "Minimum Wages and Provision of Training," Economics of Education Working Paper Series 0242, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    8. Ernest Boffy-Ramirez, 2022. "Push or Pull? Measuring the labor supply response to the minimum wage using an individual-level panel," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(35), pages 4043-4059, July.
    9. Boffy-Ramirez, Ernest, 2019. "The Short-Run Effects of the Minimum Wage on Employment and Labor Market Participation: Evidence from an Individual-Level Panel," IZA Discussion Papers 12137, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Fone, Zachary S. & Sabia, Joseph J. & Cesur, Resul, 2023. "The unintended effects of minimum wage increases on crime," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 219(C).
    11. Dao, Ngoc, 2024. "Federal minimum wage expansion to homecare workers: Employment and income effects," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    12. Bas Scheer & Wiljan van den Berge & Maarten Goos & Alan Manning & Anna Salomons, 2022. "Alternative Work Arrangements and Worker Outcomes: Evidence from Payrolling," CPB Discussion Paper 435, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    13. Wright, Austin L. & Sonin, Konstantin & Driscoll, Jesse & Wilson, Jarnickae, 2020. "Poverty and economic dislocation reduce compliance with COVID-19 shelter-in-place protocols," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 544-554.
    14. Ichev, Riste & Valentinčič, Aljoša, 2025. "The effect of impact investing on performance of private firms," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(PA).
    15. Mac Clay, Pablo & Börner, Jan & Sellare, Jorge, 2023. "Institutional and macroeconomic stability mediate the effect of auctions on renewable energy capacity," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    16. Katrin Huber & Geske Rolvering, 2023. "Public child care and mothers’ career trajectories," Working Papers 228, Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE).
    17. Shun-Yang Lee & Julian Runge & Daniel Yoo & Yakov Bart & Anett Gyurak & J. W. Schneider, 2023. "COVID-19 Demand Shocks Revisited: Did Advertising Technology Help Mitigate Adverse Consequences for Small and Midsize Businesses?," Papers 2307.09035, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    18. Wei, Qingfang & Liu, Yuan & Cai, Weixing & Wan, Jiangtao, 2025. "Open government data and personal default: Evidence from China," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    19. Coury, Michael & Falconer, Liam & La Nauze, Andrea, 2024. "Wildfire smoke and private provision of public air-quality monitoring," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    20. Catalina Amuedo‐Dorantes & Francisca M. Antman, 2022. "De facto immigration enforcement, ICE raid awareness, and worker engagement," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(1), pages 373-391, January.
    21. Ricardo Dahis & Christiane Szerman, 2023. "Decentralizing Development: Evidence from Government Splits," Monash Economics Working Papers 2023-18, Monash University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J20 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - General
    • J39 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Other
    • J88 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - Public Policy

    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:nbr:nberwo:32902. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.