‪L’impact du salaire minimum sur l’emploi dans les pays en développement‪. Le cas de la Turquie

This article focuses on the issue of the minimum wage in Turkey. It investigates the impact of the minimum wage on a labour market characterized by very low rates of labour force participation and employment, a high unemployment rate and a significant share of informal employment. It assesses empirically the impact of the minimum wage on employment of non-agricultural salaried workers over the period 1988-2013. More specifically, it distinguishes the effect of the minimum wage on the employment of males and females. It distinguishes also that impact on formal and informal jobs. The results show that the minimum wage negatively affects the whole salaried employment, and male and female salaried employment. These results are consistent with the predictions of the neoclassical theory. The results also indicate that the minimum wage has a positive effect on formal salaried employment and a negative impact on informal salaried employment. Although this result contradicts the predictions of the traditional competitive two-sector model of minimum wage, it is in line with the findings of the empirical literature on developing countries. We explain this result by a labour supply shift from the informal sector to the formal one. We conclude that the minimum wage is an important tool of public policy that Turkey should continue to use.