Spain increased its minimum wage (MW) by 22% in 2019. Given the intense debate in the economic literature on the impact of MW increases on the labour market, we conduct an impact assessment of this policy. The synthetic control method will be used to replicate the Spanish labour market by means of a pool of European countries that, in the absence of other reliable measures, simulates the evolution of Spanish employment. This will allow us to identify the causal effect from the increase in the MW. After applying the technique, the increase in the MW is found to have no effect on employment. The results have been subjected to robustness tests such as leave one out or segmentation by gender or age.

Commercial motor vehicle driving is one of the most dangerous occupations in the United States. The production of most trucking services takes places on public roadways, which makes commercial motor vehicle safety a topic of concern for industry stakeholders, supply chain operations, policy makers, and the general public. This study explores the relationship between new employee driver compensation and for-hire interstate truckload motor carrier crash incidence. The results suggest that, all else constant, higher benefits are associated with fewer crashes. While mileage pay rates predict crashes, we find that higher mileage rates can be correlated with either higher or lower crash frequency – depending on the carrier’s existing starting pay level. This may be due to pernicious incentives created by piece-rate pay structures, because drivers who have more unpaid non-driving work time may earn a slightly higher mileage pay rate, which only partially compensates them for unpaid labour time. Regardless, these results suggest that compensation is an important predictor of safety and the existing pay practices in the industry may be unsafe. It also suggests that the role of compensation in motor carrier safety performance deserves further exploration with better quality data–especially full documentation of hours of work and pay rates.

Contributing to the broader topic of minimum wage determination in developing countries, this article discusses the shaping and implementation of minimum wage policy in Papua New Guinea (PNG). It begins by outlining the institutional arrangements under which minimum wage rates are determined in PNG. It then critically examines the argument that wage levels in the country are unsustainably high – a claim that has perennially characterised Papua New Guinea (PNG) minimum wage fixing. The article argues that, on the contrary, wage levels are indeed low and not adequate to reasonably support a single worker, let alone a family in an urban setting. This counter-argument is discussed in the context of debates over minimum wage levels and their relationship to economic growth, employment creation, international competitiveness, and capacity to pay. Whilst focusing on the PNG wage fixing system, the article thus sheds light on the dilemmas and challenges facing wages policy generally in a developing country setting.

This review article provides a critique of Marilyn Lake’s Progressive New World, a monograph that postulates that Australian/Australasian transpacific exchange shaped the development of American progressivism. The review outlines the major contours of her claim, notes her ambivalence concerning her overall position, and critiques her decision to not explain/examine differences in the political culture of the United States of America and Australia. The review seeks to overcome this problem by examining key differences in the cultural history of both societies and draws on the insights of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy and America. The review (a) develops a model which provides a means to understand how one society can impact another; (b) contrasts the origins of progressivism in the United States of America and Australia; (c) examines the work of the Australian scholar Michael Roe, who postulated that American progressivism was the independent factor impacting Australian developments; (d) distinguishes between two types of progressivism – racist conceit, pure and simple, and broader social reforms, which may or may not entrench racist conceit; and (e) examines various dimensions of progressivism which Marilyn Lake has used in developing her claim.

The impact of minimum wage legislation has been widely discussed and is a major concern among labour economists. This article investigates, from economic, legal, international political, trade, and social perspectives, the possibility of decoupling foreign workers’ wages from the minimum wage in Taiwan. The results show that foreign workers’ wages cannot possibly be decoupled from the minimum wage, and foreign workers should not be treated as a separate group of workers in Taiwan’s minimum wage policy.

We use Canadian data over the period of 1991Q1 to 2019Q2 to examine the effect of higher minimum wages on consumption, measured as the real retail trade sales per adult population. Such an examination is rare in the extant literature and it is timely given the increasing debate concerning the stimulus versus inflationary effects arising from wage polices because of COVID-19 global pandemic. We apply the autoregressive distributed lag model to determine the causal relationship between these variables. We find one long-run cointegrating relationship that runs from the real minimum wage to the real retail trade sales. In addition, we find that a 1% increase in the minimum wage is associated with almost a 0.5% increase in real retail trade sales in the long run. While our findings rest on several statistical assumptions, there is strong evidence in support of the position that minimum wage strengthens aggregate consumer spending, and thereby the standard of living, economic growth and stability. This is a position that differs from the conclusions drawn from mainstream academic and policy debates on the economic usefulness and efficacy of minimum wage increases.

Adam Smith is widely regarded as the father of political economics, and as one who provided the philosophical underpinnings of much of neoclassical economics. Since the mid-1970s there has been renewed interest in, and reinterpretation of, Smith’s work. This paper looks at two aspects of this reinterpretation, the first of which is Smith’s writing on wages. Smith was an advocate of high wages, a view that strongly contrasted with the received wisdom of the day. He considered that a wage which provided for a reasonable standard of living was essential for the development of an economy. The second aspect encompasses Smith’s notion of the subsistence wage which traces its historic lineage to the Greek philosophers. The paper concludes that Smith, the champion of ‘liberty’ and non-government interference in markets, would probably have supported the notion of minimum wages, such as are now mandated in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. Nevertheless, the mandating of minimum wages is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the achievement of living wage outcomes.

In this article, we study the minimum wage setting reform in Russia that aimed to decentralise the fixing of the minimum wage and to increase the involvement of social partners into this process. The old system of minimum wage setting was based on a single nationwide minimum wage which was differentiated across regions and occupations via a cumbersome framework of coefficients. The new system is a mixture of the government-set minimum wage at the federal level and collective agreements at the regional level. We show that the system of minimum wage setting has become more flexible. The reform succeeded in raising the real value of the minimum wage and increasing earnings of low-paid workers without causing significant negative effects in terms of employment. The reform did not lead to greater regional variation of minimum wages. Nevertheless, it introduced some new imbalances: an unintended consequence of the reform was the emergence of separate regional wage sub-minima for private and public sector workers in many regions. The major challenge in coming years is to strengthen the institutions of collective bargaining, introduce evidence-based evaluation and boost the capacities of government and non-government monitoring agencies.

Under what circumstances can minimum wages increase without adverse effects on employment levels? In 31 Chinese provinces between 2004 and 2015, the employment effect of a minimum wage depended on the minimum wage level, foreign direct investment, per capita gross domestic product and labour productivity. A minimum wage increase reduced hiring as foreign direct investment inflow rose, regardless of the amount of investment. Any positive employment effect of a minimum wage increase was mitigated by per capita gross domestic product growth, except when per capita gross domestic product was above the average. Above-average labour productivity enhancement significantly mitigated the adverse employment effect of the minimum wage. Employers responded to a rising minimum wage by increasing hiring when the geometric growth rates of the minimum wage and foreign direct investment for a particular province within a period of time were above the overall average across provinces. However, they scrutinised both annual and overall economic growth within a time period when making hiring decisions in the face of minimum wage adjustments. An inverted U-shape relationship between minimum wages and employment suggest a maximum threshold value for the minimum wage. Thus, government policy measures should foster short-term and long-term economic growth, to facilitate employment creation when minimum wages increase.

This paper evaluates the impact of an increase in the federal or state minimum wage on the egg industry, where labor is a key input. This analysis uses an for Iowa, a key egg-producing state. When spread across the industry, the total negative effects of the increased minimum wage do not appear to be economically significant. This is due largely to the Iowa egg industry’s current equilibrium wage of $13.50 an hour. Thus, a $15.00 minimum wage adds only $1.50; however, to stay competitive, egg industry employers likely would increase their wage above $15.00. Despite these seemingly small effects, egg producers may struggle in the short run to respond to immediate labor expenses should Iowa or the United States not phase in its minimum wage over the course of several years.

This article uses baseline data from an observational study to estimate the determinants of racial and gender disparities in obesity. Samples of low-income workers in Minneapolis and Raleigh reveal that respondents in Minneapolis have lower body mass indices (BMIs) than respondents in Raleigh. There are large, statistically significant race and gender effects in estimates of BMI that explain most of the disparity between the two cities. Accounting for intersectionality—the joint impacts of being Black and a woman—reveals that almost all the BMI gaps between Black women in Minneapolis and Raleigh can be explained by age and education differences.

With the ‘gig economy’ moving to the forefront of research on service labour, interest has heightened in the techniques of labour control that reproduce it. Taking tipping as just such a technique, this article explores critically the policy research around ‘tipped’ employment in the United States. In the United States, tipping is a legally recognised form of labour remuneration that informalises the wage relation, incentivises the worker in precarity, and internalises social relations of subordination. Understanding tipped work, its legal status, its operative logic, and the contradictions that arise within its framework, is a priority for relevant social policy analysis. The aims here are: 1) to set out the ‘topography’ of the policy landscape on tipping in the United States; and 2) to problematise the current scope of this policy literature in societal terms. This research will focus on the restaurant industry, but will establish its broader societal significance.

The minimum wage is often considered a social policy instrument that can help reduce both poverty and welfare receipt. The introduction of the statutory minimum wage in Germany in 2015 provides an interesting case study to analyse not only the potential but also the limitations of minimum wages as an instrument to achieve socially desirable goals such as reduced welfare receipt or poverty. Based on the results of simulation models, descriptive analyses and causal effects studies of the short-term effects, we argue that minimum wages are a rather badly targeted measure when attempting to reduce poverty and welfare receipt.

L'enjeu politique de la fixation du salaire minimum a été relativement peu étudié en science politique. Dans cet article, nous examinons le rôle des partis politiques de gauche sur la fixation du salaire minimum. Comme prédit par la théorie des ressources du pouvoir, les partis de gauche devraient encourager l'augmentation du salaire minimum. Nous postulons toutefois que cet effet diffère selon le niveau de corporatisme. Plus particulièrement, nous pensons que l'effet des partis politiques de gauche devrait être plus faible sous des niveaux de corporatisme élevés puisque les partenaires sociaux sont davantage consultés et que les gouvernements ont tendance à leur déléguer la régulation des salaires. Nos résultats confirment ces hypothèses. Ils indiquent que le salaire minimum tend à augmenter lorsque les gouvernements sont davantage à gauche idéologiquement et que cette relation est plus forte lorsque le degré de corporatisme est faible.