TY  - JOUR
AU  - Holzer,Harry J.
AU  - Katz,Lawrence F.
AU  - Krueger,Alan B.
TI  - Job Queues and Wages:  New Evidence on the Minimum Wage and Inter-Industry Wage Structure
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 2561
PY  - 1988
Y2  - April 1988
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w2561
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w2561.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Harry J. Holzer
Georgetown University
3520 Prospect Street NW,4th Floor
Washington, DC  20007
E-Mail: hjh4@georgetown.edu

Lawrence F. Katz
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/495-5148
Fax: 617/613-1245
E-Mail: lkatz@harvard.edu

Alan B. Krueger
Industrial Relations Section
Firestone Library
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
Tel: 609/258-4046
Fax: 609/258-2907
E-Mail: akrueger@princeton.edu
AB  - This paper uses job applications- data to test the existence of non-competitive, ex-ante rents in the labor market. We first examine whether jobs that pay the legal minimum wage face an excessively of labor as measured by the number of job applications received for the most recent positions filled by the firs. The results indicate that openings for jobs that pay the minimum wage attract significantly more job applications than jobs that pay either more or less than the minimum wage. This spike in the job application rate distribution indicates that ex-ante rents generated for employees by an above market-level minimum wage do not appear to be completely dissipated by employer actions. The second part of the paper uses a similar approach to examine whether jobs in high-wage industries pay above market-clearing wage rates. We find a weak, positive relationship between inter-industry applications differentials and inter-industry wage differentials. In addition, our results indicate that employer size has a sizeable positive effect on the job application rate even after controlling for the wage rate. The paper considers several possible explanations for these findings.
ER  -