NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

The Effects of Living Wage Laws: Evidence from Failed and Derailed Living Wage Campaigns

use a mirror
Use a mirror

download in pdf format
   (201 K)

email paper

Scott Adams, David Neumark

NBER Working Paper No. 11342
Issued in May 2005
NBER Program(s):   LS

Living wage campaigns have succeeded in about 100 jurisdictions in the United States but have also been unsuccessful in numerous cities. These unsuccessful campaigns provide a better control group or counterfactual for estimating the effects of living wage laws than the broader set of all cities without a law, and also permit the separate estimation of the effects of living wage laws and living wage campaigns. We find that living wage laws raise wages of low-wage workers but reduce employment among the least-skilled, especially when the laws cover business assistance recipients or are accompanied by similar laws in nearby cities.

Published: Adams, Scott and David Neumark. "The Effects Of Living Wage Laws: Evidence From Failed And Derailed Living Wage Campaigns," Journal of Urban Economics, 2005, v58(2,Sep), 177-202.

This paper is available as PDF (201 K) or via email.

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

 
Publications
Activities
Meetings
Data
People
About

Support
National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138; 617-868-3900; email: info@nber.org

Contact Us