IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/restat/v104y2022i5p890-908.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Pass-Through of Minimum Wages into U.S. Retail Prices: Evidence from Supermarket Scanner Data

Author

Listed:
  • Tobias Renkin
  • Claire Montialoux
  • Michael Siegenthaler

Abstract

This paper estimates the pass-through of minimum wage increases into the prices of U.S. grocery and drug stores. We use high-frequency scanner data and leverage a large number of state-level increases in minimum wages between 2001 and 2012. We find that a 10% minimum wage hike translates into a 0.36% increase in the prices of grocery products. This magnitude is consistent with a full pass-through of cost increases into consumer prices. We show that price adjustments occur mostly in the three months following the passage of minimum wage legislation rather than after implementation, suggesting that pricing of groceries is forward-looking.

Suggested Citation

  • Tobias Renkin & Claire Montialoux & Michael Siegenthaler, 2022. "The Pass-Through of Minimum Wages into U.S. Retail Prices: Evidence from Supermarket Scanner Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 104(5), pages 890-908, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:104:y:2022:i:5:p:890-908
    DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_00981
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_00981
    Download Restriction: Access to PDF is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1162/rest_a_00981?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Ying Liang, 2024. "Firms' Risk Adjustments to Minimum Wage: Financial Leverage and Labor Share Trade-off," Papers 2408.03659, arXiv.org.
    2. Hill, Seth J, 2023. "Minimum Wages and Homelessness," OSF Preprints z2fqj, Center for Open Science.
    3. Sebastian Link, 2019. "The Price and Employment Response of Firms to the Introduction of Minimum Wages," CESifo Working Paper Series 7575, CESifo.
    4. Brown, Jessica H. & Herbst, Chris M., 2023. "Minimum Wage, Worker Quality, and Consumer Well-Being: Evidence from the Child Care Market," IZA Discussion Papers 16257, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Kunaschk, Max, 2024. "The effects of minimum wages on employment and prices—Evidence from the hairdressing sector," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    6. Petra E. Todd & Weilong Zhang, 2022. "Distributional Effects of Local Minimum Wages: A Spatial Job Search Approach," NBER Working Papers 30668, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Carl Hase & Johannes Kasinger, 2024. "The Pass-through of Retail Crime," Papers 2407.07201, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2024.
    8. Haelbig, Mirja & Mertens, Matthias & Müller, Steffen, 2023. "Minimum Wages, Productivity, and Reallocation," IZA Discussion Papers 16160, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Abrahams, Scott, 2024. "Downward minimum wage rigidity: Evidence from a temporary four-month increase in St. Louis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 218(C), pages 30-47.
    10. Arindrajit Dube & Attila S. Lindner, 2024. "Minimum Wages in the 21st Century," NBER Working Papers 32878, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Richards, Timothy J. & Paudel, Ujjwol, 2024. "Minimum Wages and Pass-Through," 2024 Annual Meeting, July 28-30, New Orleans, LA 343648, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

    More about this item

    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:tpr:restat:v:104:y:2022:i:5:p:890-908. 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: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    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.