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When the Minimum Wage Really Bites Hard: Impact on Top Earners and Skill Supply

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  • Gregory, Terry

    (LISER)

  • Zierahn, Ulrich

    (ZEW Mannheim)

Abstract

This paper provides new insights into how wages and employment adjust to a minimum wage policy along different wage and skill groups. For this, we exploit a quasi-experimental setting in the 1990s, where a German industry introduced a minimum wage at an extraordinary high level during an economic downturn with falling revenues. We find positive wage spillovers to medium-skilled workers with wages just above the minimum wage. More striking, we also find negative wage effects for high-skilled workers situated higher up in the wage distribution, followed by reduced returns to skills and skill supply in the industry. We explain these adjustments, both theoretically and empirically, with a substitution-scale model that predicts negative spillovers whenever labour demand shifts from low- to more skilled workers (substitution effect) are overcompensated by an overall decline in labour demand (scale effect).

Suggested Citation

  • Gregory, Terry & Zierahn, Ulrich, 2020. "When the Minimum Wage Really Bites Hard: Impact on Top Earners and Skill Supply," IZA Discussion Papers 13633, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13633
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    scale effect; unconditional quantile regression; returns to skills; spillover effects; wage restraints; wage effects; minimum wages; substitution effect; skill supply;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J38 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Public Policy
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand

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