%0 Report
        %A Addison, John T.
%A Blackburn, McKinley L.
%A Cotti, Chad
        %T The Effect of Minimum Wages on Wages and Employment: County-Level Estimates for the United States
        %D 2008
        %8 2008 Jan
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 3300
        %U https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp3300
        %X We use county-level data on employment and earnings in the restaurant-and-bar sector to evaluate the impact of minimum wage changes on low-wage labor markets. Our empirical approach is similar to the literature that has used state-level panel data to estimate minimum-wage impacts, with the difference that we focus on a particular sector rather than demographic group. Our estimated models are consistent with a simple competitive model of the restaurant-and-bar labor market in which supply-and-demand factors affect both the equilibrium outcome and the probability that a minimum wage will be binding in any given time period. Our evidence does not suggest that minimum wages reduce employment in the overall restaurant-and-bar sector, after controls for trends in sector employment at the county level are incorporated in the model. Employment in this sector appears to exhibit a downward long-term trend in states that have increased their minimum wages relative to states that have not, thereby predisposing fixed-effects estimates towards finding negative employment effects.
        %K wages and employment
%K minimum wages
%K county-level data
%K spatial trends