SMU SOE Online Seminar (Oct 12, 2022, 9am-10.30am): Price Floors and Employer Preferences: Evidence from a Minimum Wage Experiment

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ABSTRACT Firms posting job openings in an online labor market were randomly assigned minimum hourly wages. When facing a minimum wage, fewer firms hired, but those they did hire paid higher wages. The reduction in hiring was fairly small, even at the highest minimum wage imposed. In contrast, minimum wages substantially reduced hours-worked, across cells. Firms facing a higher minimum wage shifted to hiring more productive workers. This labor-labor substitution margin of adjustment would presumably be less effective in equilibrium, if all firms sought out more productive workers. Using the platform’s imposition of a market-wide minimum wage after the experiment, I find that many of the experimental results also hold in equilibrium, including the substitution towards more productive workers. However, there was also a large reduction in the number of jobs posted for which the minimum wage would likely bind and a shift to using non-wage based contracts. Click here to view the CV.		This seminar will be held virtually via Zoom. A confirmation email with the Zoom details will be sent to the registered email by 11 October 2022.
		PRESENTER John Horton Massachusetts Institute of Technology
		RESEARCH FIELDS Labor Economics Market Design Information Systems
		DATE: 12 October 2022 (Wednesday)
		TIME: 9.00am - 10.30am