Pros and Cons of Minimum Wage
| Thesis title in Czech: | Výhody a nevýhody minimální mzdy |
|---|---|
| Thesis title in English: | Pros and Cons of Minimum Wage |
| Key words: | minimální mzda, zaměstnanost, trh práce, distibuce mezd |
| English key words: | minimum wage, employment, labour market, wage distribution |
| Academic year of topic announcement: | 2015/2016 |
| Thesis type: | Bachelor's thesis |
| Thesis language: | angličtina |
| Department: | Institute of Economic Studies (23-IES) |
| Supervisor: | doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc. |
| Author: | hidden - assigned by the advisor |
| Date of registration: | 26.05.2016 |
| Date of assignment: | 26.05.2016 |
| Date and time of defence: | 18.09.2017 00:00 |
| Venue of defence: | IES |
| Date of electronic submission: | 19.05.2017 |
| Date of proceeded defence: | 18.09.2017 |
| Opponents: | Mgr. David Svačina |
| URKUND check: | |
| Guidelines |
| Please come in my office hours (Thursday 4-5 p.m., room 410) to discuss details. Econometric analysis will be part of the thesis. |
| References |
| Bibliography
Brown, Charles, Curtis Gilroy, and Andrew Kohen. (1982). The Effect of the Minimum Wage upon Employment and Unemployment. Journal of Economic Literature 20.2:487–528. Cahuc, P., Carcillo, S., & Zylberberg, A. (2014). Labor economics. Card, D. E., & Krueger, A. B. (1995). Myth and measurement: The new economics of the minimum wage. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. Dolado, J. J., Felgueroso, F., Jimeno, J., & Centre for Economic Policy Research (Great Britain). (2000). The role of the minimum wage in the welfare state: An appraisal. London: Centre for Economic Policy Research. Dube, Arindrajit, T. William Lester, and Michael Reich. (2010). Minimum Wage Effects across State Borders: Estimates Using Contiguous Counties, Review of Economics and Statistics, 92 (4), 945–964. Flinn, C. J. (2010). The minimum wage and labor market outcomes. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Freeman, Richard. (1989). Labor Markets in Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press Krueger, Alan, and Lawrence Summers. (1988). Efficiency Wages and the Interindustry Wage Structure. Econometrica 56.2:259–93. Meyer, Robert and David Wise (1983). "The effects of the minimum wage on the employment and earnings of youth", Journal of Labor Economics, 1, 66-100. Neumark, D., & Wascher, W. L. (2008). Minimum wages. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Stigler, G. J. (June 01, 1946). The Economics of Minimum Wage Legislation. The American Economic Review, 36, 3, 358-365. |
| Preliminary scope of work in English |
| Research question and motivation
The motivation for my thesis is the fact that the concept of a minimum wage is at the center of a discussion among the economists and while theoretically the effects of the minimum wage are relatively well understood, empirical analyses give ambiguous results. Stigler (1946) or Neumark and Wascher (2010) came to the conclusion that an increase in the minimum wage has adverse effects on low-skilled workers. The supporters of a minimum wage (e.g. Card and Krueger, 1995; Dube et al., 2010) claim that the employment effects are at most minimal and a minimum wage induces a rise in the income for low-income workers. The thesis will attempt to answer questions like: What are the consequences of a minimum wage on the general labour market? What are the effects of a minimum wage on the employment of different categories of workers, e.g. low-skilled, youth? Does the minimum wage change the wage distribution? What are its effects on the gender wage gap? Contribution There is a growing body of literature using cross-country comparisons to estimate the effects of labor market policies and out of them only a few studies analyze the minimum wage and its effects across the countries. Therefore, more research is needed in this respect and the thesis could bring more light to the highly discussed debate which relates to the issues of income inequality and redistribution, another highly discussed topics nowadays. Methodology I intend to collect data for EU member states which have a statutory minimum wage (some of them may be excluded due to the lack of data). The thesis will use a cross-section time-series (panel) data set. The method will probably be a panel data regression with fixed effects and will include a set of explanatory variables in order to control to control for differences in a macroeconomic environment and labour market institutions. Outline 1. Introduction 2. Review of literature and methods used in the literature for empirical testing 3. Theoretical background 4. Empirical model i. Results 6. Discussion and concluding remarks |